Plenty of important paperwork only exists as a scan: a lease signed years ago, a notice that came in the mail, a stack of statements you photographed for your records. The scan is fine to look at, but to your computer it's just pixels. Press Ctrl+F and nothing highlights; try to copy a clause and you draw a box over an image.
OCR Pages in the editor now gives you two choices for a scanned page. This guide covers the first one, Make it searchable, which is the right choice for most scans. (The second, Turn it into editable text, rebuilds the page as text you can retype — see making a scanned page editable.)
What “searchable” means here
Making a page searchable reads the words on the scan and lays invisible text exactly over each one. Nothing about the picture changes. What you gain:
- Find — Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on a Mac) finds words on the scan.
- Select and copy — drag over a line and copy it, the same way you would on a digital PDF.
- Screen readers — assistive technology has real text to read instead of an image.
- It travels with the file — the text is written into the PDF you download or send, in the same positions, so other PDF readers can search it too.
Because the page itself is untouched, a stamped, initialled or signed original still looks exactly like the original.
How to make a scanned PDF searchable
- Open the scan in EZ PDF Editor and sign in. OCR needs an account because the pages you convert are counted.
- Open OCR Pages. Click the OCR Pages tile in the sidebar Tools, or choose Convert Pages to Text in the document ⋯ menu. Both open the same window.
- Choose Make it searchable. Under What do you want?, pick Make it searchable — it's marked Best for scans, and the window opens on it when the page you're on is a scan.
- Pick the pages. This page, All pages, or Choose pages with a range like
1-3, 5. Pages that already have selectable text are left out, and the window tells you how many. - Set the language. Language on the page offers English, Français (French) and English + French. It's usually picked for you — more on that in our guide to OCR for French and bilingual forms.
- Run it. The button says exactly what will happen: Make Page 1 Searchable, or Make 3 Pages Searchable.
- Check the result. Press Ctrl+F and search for a word you can see, or select a line. Then Download, or Save to My Files to keep working on it later.
Changed your mind? Undo removes the text layer in one step.
Searchable or editable? Pick the right one
Both options start by reading the page, but they leave you with very different documents:
| What you need | Make it searchable | Turn it into editable text |
|---|---|---|
| How the page looks afterwards | Exactly as scanned — stamps, signatures and handwriting included | Rebuilt as text in a matched font; images, lines and columns are not kept |
| Find words with Ctrl+F | Yes | Yes |
| Select and copy text | Yes | Yes |
| Retype or correct a word | No — the picture is unchanged | Yes |
| Keep the original page | It is the original page | Optional: Keep the original pages too |
| Best for | Signed or stamped records, archives, anything you need to find later | Updating the wording of an old form or letter |
Make it searchable before you send it for signature
If a scanned document is about to go out for signature, run OCR first. Once a request is signed, the completed file is sealed — its fingerprint is on record, so that copy is never changed afterwards. Making the pages searchable before you send the PDF for e-signature means the signed, sealed copy everyone receives is searchable too.
Make your scan searchable
Open a scan, choose OCR Pages → Make it searchable, and download a PDF you can search. Free accounts include 5 OCR pages a month; Pro is unlimited.
Open EZ PDF Editor →Real things people use it for
- Signed agreements that only exist as scans. Jump to “renewal” or “termination” instead of reading every page.
- Notices and letters that arrive on paper. Scan them once and quote the exact wording in a reply.
- Records you keep for years. Statements, receipts and forms become findable by name, date or amount.
- Accessibility. A scan that a screen reader could only call “image” now has text it can read aloud.
What to expect
- Rotated pages are handled — the invisible words line up with the page as you see it.
- Pages that already have text are skipped, and a page only discovered to have text during the run is skipped without using up your OCR pages.
- Redactions stay redactions. On a page flattened for a redaction, words under a redaction box are left out of the text.
- Recognition isn't perfect. Clean printed text reads very well; faint copies, handwriting and dense dotted leader lines (like a printed table of contents) can misread. Low-confidence words are left out rather than guessed.
For the best result, scan straight and well lit at around 300 DPI.
Privacy
The text reader runs in your browser tab. Its language files are served from our own server, not a third-party CDN, and your scan isn't sent anywhere to be read. Signing in is what lets the editor count your OCR pages; the document stays on your device unless you save it to your account or send it for signature.
The short version
OCR Pages → Make it searchable keeps every scanned page exactly as it looks and adds invisible text over the words, so Ctrl+F, copy and screen readers work — in the editor and in the PDF you download. Use it for records you need to find later, and run it before sending a scan out for signature. When you need to change the wording instead, choose Turn it into editable text.