How to make a scanned PDF searchable

To a computer, a scanned document is just a picture: it can't be searched, copied or read aloud. OCR fixes that.

Step by step

1. Open the OCR tool and add the scanned PDF or photos of the pages.
2. Choose the document language — Serbian Latin, Cyrillic or English.
3. Click Recognize text. The first time, a language model (a few MB) is downloaded; after that it works offline too.
4. Download a PDF that looks just like the original, but where Ctrl+F and copying work.

Tips for a better result

• Scan at 300 DPI or photograph in good light, without shadows.
• The page should be flat and upright — skewed text is recognized less well.
• Handwriting isn't recognized reliably; OCR is meant for printed text.

If you want to edit the text in Word, use "Continue with" after OCR or save the result as .txt.