Scanned PDFs are image-based — you cannot select or copy the text, and standard PDF-to-Word converters produce blank documents. The solution is OCR: extract the text first, then convert. Here's how to do it free in your browser.
A scanned PDF stores each page as a raster image. When a converter processes it, there is no text data to extract — only the image pixels. The result is either a blank Word document or a DOCX containing only embedded images with no editable text.
Open PDF Studio at pdfeditor.onl/pdf-studio and upload your scanned PDF. Click the OCR tool. The Tesseract WebAssembly engine analyses each page image and generates a real text layer. Download the OCR-processed PDF.
Tip: OCR accuracy is highest on scanned documents with high contrast — black text on white background at 200 DPI or higher. Low-quality or faded scans will produce lower accuracy.
Go to pdfeditor.onl/convert-pdf and upload the OCR-processed PDF. Select PDF → DOCX. Click Convert and download the Word document.
Open the DOCX in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or LibreOffice. Review the text for any OCR errors and correct them. Complex formatting may need manual adjustment.
For clean scans of printed text, accuracy is typically 95–99%. For handwritten text, faded documents, or low-resolution scans below 150 DPI, accuracy may be lower.
OCR is primarily optimised for printed text. Handwriting recognition accuracy varies widely depending on legibility. For handwritten notes, expect to do significant manual correction.
Yes — both the OCR tool in PDF Studio and the PDF-to-DOCX converter are completely free with no account required.