How to Convert Scanned PDFs to Text with OCR on Mac OS X

This is a quick tip to show you how to convert a PDF file to text on Mac OS X.  This is a common requirement if you have a PDF that was produced by scanning a physical document, so it contains text that is embedded as an image.

You can use the free program, PDF OCR X, to easily perform the conversion using OCR (Optical Character Recognition).

Steps:

1. Download PDF OCR X Community Edition for Mac OS X

   

   Contents of DMG file after downloading.  You should copy the PDF OCR X icon into your Applications directory.

2. Open PDF OCR X.  You should see a little window open where you can drag your PDF file.  Drag the PDF file that you wish to convert onto this window.

   

   PDF OCR X window.  Drag the PDF file onto this to convert it to text.

3. Select the language of the text, and select output mode "Text".  (If you select searchable PDF it will make the PDF searchable.  Text output will extract the text of the PDF and save it in a text file).

   

   The conversion dialog to choose your OCR X settings.  If you want to extract the text, then leave "Output format" as text.  Note you can add additional language packs if you need to convert French, Chinese, German, Japanese, and many other languages of text.

4. Start editing the text.
   
   
   

You may also want to check out this post from another blog on setting up an automated OCR conversion involving PDF OCR X.

Video Tutorial