OCR PDF · 2 min read

How to Extract Text from a Scanned PDF — Free OCR Tool

Need to copy text from a scanned PDF but it is all just an image? OCR technology extracts the text so you can select, copy, edit, and search it. Here is how to do it for free.

1

Open pdfeditor.onl/ocr-pdf

Visit the OCR tool in any modern browser. It uses Tesseract OCR running entirely in your browser — no server involved.

2

Upload and Scan Your PDF

Upload your scanned PDF and click Scan All Pages. The tool extracts text from every page and overlays it as editable text blocks.

Tip: After scanning, use Ctrl+A to select all text blocks on a page and Ctrl+C to copy all extracted text to your clipboard.

3

Save or Copy the Extracted Text

Copy individual text blocks directly, or click Save PDF to download a version with the text layer permanently embedded for future searching and selection.

Extract Text from PDF — Free OCR →

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I extract text from a PDF that is an image scan?

Yes. pdfeditor.onl/ocr-pdf is specifically designed for image-based scanned PDFs. It renders each page and uses OCR to find and extract the text.

Does it work for multi-language documents?

You can select a single language before scanning. For multi-language documents, run OCR twice — once per language — and the text blocks from both passes will be available.

Is text extraction free?

Yes — completely free at pdfeditor.onl/ocr-pdf.

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