Make a scan searchable

Turn a scanned PDF into one you can search and copy text from. Free on WholeFiles, with no sign-up, no watermark and no daily limit.

Runs on our server. Your file is deleted within 10 minutes.Last reviewed 22 September 2026

Drop a file here

Choose a file

This tool runs on our server. Your file is sent over an encrypted connection and deleted within 10 minutes.

Before you start. Up to 300 pages and 95 MB per job. Every page is redrawn at 300 dpi, or less for a page more than 16 inches long so the picture stays under 5000 pixels, and kept as a picture with its text behind it, so the searchable copy can be larger than the scan you send, and a scan made at a higher resolution comes back smaller. Runs on our server, because text recognition needs software far too large for a browser. Your file is deleted within 10 minutes.

Step by step

Drop the scanned PDF onto the page, or press Choose a file.
Pick the language of the document.
Press Recognise text and save the searchable PDF.

How it works

Each page is redrawn at 300 dpi (less for a page more than 16 inches long), turned the right way up if it was upside down, saved as a JPEG, and read by Tesseract, the open source recogniser first built at HP and later developed at Google. The recognised words are placed invisibly over that picture, and the picture is what the searchable file holds, so every word can be selected or searched.

People also use

Questions

How accurate is it?

On a clean 300 dpi scan of printed text, nearly every word. Faded, skewed or handwritten pages recognise poorly; there is no fix for that in any free tool.

Does the page look different afterwards?

The page is redrawn at 300 dpi and saved as a JPEG, and that picture becomes the page, with the recognised words invisible over it. A scan made at 300 dpi or less looks the same. A scan made at a higher resolution comes back at 300 dpi, and a page that already held real text becomes a picture of that text.

Which languages?

English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch and Hindi. For a mixed document, English can be paired with German, French, Spanish or Hindi.

Where does my file go?

To the WholeFiles server, once, over an encrypted connection. It is processed, sent back, and deleted within 10 minutes. Nothing is kept.

Make a scan searchable

Questions

More PDF tools