How to make a scanned Tamil or English PDF searchable (OCR)
2026-10-27
You have a scanned PDF of an old document, a land record or a book chapter. You press Ctrl+F to find a word and nothing happens. You try to copy a paragraph and you can't select it. That's because a scan is only a picture of text.
OCR (optical character recognition) reads the letters in the picture and adds an invisible text layer to the PDF. The page looks the same, but now you can search it and copy from it.
Steps
- Open OCR PDF.
- Select your scanned PDF.
- Choose the language: English, Tamil, Hindi, or a mix like English + Tamil.
- Click Run OCR and download the searchable PDF.
Choosing the right language matters. Tamil letters are recognised only when Tamil is selected.
Getting the best results
- Clear scans work best. Text should be sharp and dark on a light background.
- Straight pages. Rotate sideways pages first with Rotate PDF.
- Resolution: around 300 DPI is ideal. Very small or blurry text may be misread.
- Printed text, not handwriting. OCR is designed for printed text; handwriting is rarely recognised well.
What can you do after OCR?
- Search the PDF with Ctrl+F (or Find in your phone's PDF viewer).
- Copy text into an email or document.
- Convert to an editable document with PDF to Word.
- Extract tables with PDF to Excel.
Is my file safe?
OCR runs on our server because it needs special software. Your file is deleted as soon as the result is sent back to you, and nobody looks at it.