A bundle of scanned receipts, a stack of cheques, a court record that went through a photocopier: long documents that are nothing but pictures of paper. They are exactly the documents that need bookmarks most, and exactly the ones most tools cannot bookmark, because bookmarks usually start from selected text and a scan has none.
How other tools handle it
In Adobe Acrobat you first run Recognize Text (OCR) on the scan. Then you select a line, create a New Bookmark from it, and repeat for every entry. It works, but it is a paid feature and a manual one. No mainstream tool bookmarks a scanned bundle for you. EZ PDF Editor gives you three ways, and none of them needs OCR first.
1. + Add Here — a bookmark on any spot
Open the scan in EZ PDF Editor, click Pages & Bookmarks in the sidebar Tools and choose Bookmarks. Click + Add Here, then click the spot on any page where the bookmark should land. The pages get a dashed outline while it is waiting for your click, and Esc cancels.
It reads the words at that spot and suggests them as the name: from the page's real text on a digital PDF, and with OCR, in your browser, on a scan. OCR noise at the edge is trimmed and a long line is shortened. Keep it, change it, or type your own. The bookmark points at that exact spot, not just the top of the page. It works on image pages, rotated pages, Design pages and Document pages alike.
2. Every Page — one bookmark per page
For a bundle where every page is its own item — receipts, cheques, invoices, letters — click Every Page. Each page gets one bookmark, named from the first readable line near its top. A page with nothing readable is simply called "Page 7". Pages that already have a bookmark are left alone. The whole run is one undo step, so Ctrl+Z removes everything it added.
Bookmark your scan
Open the PDF, choose Bookmarks, and click Every Page — free, and the scan never leaves your browser.
Open EZ PDF Editor →3. AutoScan — read a printed Contents page
Many long documents already have a printed "Contents" page that is not linked to anything. AutoScan finds that page, reads each title and page number, and checks every title against the real pages before offering them for you to tick. It recognises "Table of Contents", "Contents" and "Index" headings, and entries with dot, dash or underscore leaders.
On a scan, make it searchable first with OCR Pages; AutoScan then reads the recognised words. On a scan that has not been OCR'd yet, AutoScan offers Every Page instead of coming back empty.
They are real bookmarks
However an entry was made, it is written into the download as a real PDF bookmark: the same /Outlines structure Acrobat writes. Open the file in Acrobat, Chrome's PDF viewer or Preview and the bookmarks panel is there. You can edit, reorder, nest and delete entries in the Bookmarks tab first — see adding a Table of Contents to a PDF for everything the list can do.
Tips for scanned bundles
- Clean up first. A straight, white page reads better. Enhance and Auto-straighten the scan before Every Page for better names.
- Turn sideways pages. Rotate any sideways page so it reads the right way up.
- Mix the methods. Use Every Page for the bundle, then + Add Here for a few spots inside long pages.
| What you need | EZ PDF Editor | Adobe Acrobat |
|---|---|---|
| Bookmark a scan without OCR first | Yes — + Add Here and Every Page | No — Recognize Text first |
| Bookmark every page automatically | Yes — Every Page | No |
| Read a printed Contents page | Yes — AutoScan | No |
| Bookmark lands on the exact spot | Yes | Yes |
| Price | Free | Acrobat Pro (paid) |