Convert a scanned PDF to text
If your PDF is just pictures of pages, upload it here. Get page-by-page text you can read, copy and download as Word, TXT or structured JSON.
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Sign up free to upload — sample shown opposite.
Get back
IllustrationTHE DAILY RECORD COUNCIL APPROVES NEW BRIDGE The city council voted on Tuesday to fund the new river crossing, ending a debate that has run for most of the year. Work is expected to begin in the spring. — page 1 of 12
What people use it for
Office documents
Turn scanned office documents into text that can be copied or downloaded instead of retyped.
Research papers and journals
Extract printed text from scanned research material, including multi-column journal pages.
Study material
Convert scanned PDFs into page-by-page text for students to read and copy.
Old books and newspapers
Extract printed text from scanned books, journals and newspapers. A photo or image of a large page is read region by region at full resolution, so small type is not shrunk.
How it works
- 1
Upload the scanned PDF
Choose a PDF up to 25 MB or paste a link to one.
- 2
Let every page be read
Long PDFs are processed a few pages at a time, so every page comes back. A large page uploaded as an image is read region by region at full resolution.
- 3
Copy or download the text
Read the result page by page, copy all or one page, or download Word, TXT or JSON.
How it compares
The problem
- A scanned PDF is made of page images with no selectable text layer.
- Text cannot be copied directly from those page images.
- In the newspaper comparison, a free OCR engine had 18% character error.
With Presentr Analyze
- The same newspaper page had 2.9% character error.
- Multi-column pages keep their column reading order.
- A large page uploaded as an image is read region by region at full resolution, so small type is not shrunk.
Frequently asked questions
Make your scanned PDF copyable
Start with 5 credits. Extract every page, check the result against the original and download it as Word, TXT or structured JSON.
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