How to Find Information in PDFs by Using Optical Character Recognition

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Looking at a document with tons of information in PDF format can be frustrating. How do you find the information that you need? That’s where optical character recognition (OCR) comes in. OCR software extracts the text from a document or image file so that other programs like Microsoft Word can read and process it. In this blog post, we will explain how to find information from a PDF document using OCR.

Install an OCR program

The first step is to install an OCR program on your computer. You can find an OCR program that works for Windows or macOS. If you have a Mac, you can use the built-in OCR program.

Step 1: Find the information you need

When you open the PDF file, look for a section of text that you’re most interested. For example, you might want to find the phone number of a business. Once you find the information you want to extract, highlight the text so that you won’t lose it when you convert the file to editable format. If you want to be 100% certain that the OCR process will work correctly, use the ‘copy’ command to duplicate the information.

Step 2: Convert the PDF to an editable format

The next step is to convert the PDF file to another format. This will allow you to use the OCR program to extract the text from the file. You can use a program like Adobe Acrobat or Preview on a Mac to convert the file. Once you convert the file, open it with the OCR program.

Finding Information in a PDF Using Optical Character Recognition

The last step is to use the OCR program to extract the text from the file. Once the program extracts the text, you can open it in Microsoft Word or another program and read it. The OCR program will recognize the font and spacing in the document, which means that it can read it even if it’s formatted oddly. If you don’t like the results of the OCR process, you can try a different program. Once you have the information from the PDF file, you can do whatever you want with it.

Summing up

It’s important to know how to find information in PDF documents because they are so common. If you need to share information with someone else in a secure setting, you can send a PDF file to keep it safe. When you need to extract information from a PDF file, use an OCR program. When you use an OCR program, you can easily read and share the information inside the file.

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