Searchable PDF Conversion Settings

This dialog box appears if you do any of the following:

  • Click the Settings button in the PDF Create Profiles dialog box with the Searchable check box selected.
  • Click Convert > Other > Searchable PDF, and then click Settings in the Convert Pages dialog box.
  • Visit preferences for the OCR process at File > Options > Document > Searchable PDF Document.

Use these settings to create Searchable PDFs from image files or Image-only PDF files that are not searchable. See the list of supported file types in Create Assistant.

OCR Language
OCR is needed for extracting text from images to make image files searchable. Select the language that appears in the source document.
Reject character
Unrecognizable characters are represented by a reject character (a tilde: ~ by default) . For example, if the OCR could not recognize the J in REJECT, and ~ is the reject character, then the string RE~ECT would appear in your document.
Type the character you want to use in the Reject character edit box. Try to select a character that will not appear in your documents.
Keep original images
Select this check box to retain the original image after conversion.
Auto orient pages
Select this check box to automatically set page orientation (landscape or portrait).
Process Pages
Select which pages to process when converting the PDF document to be searchable.
  • Image-only pages: By default, Power PDF processes only pages that include only image (bitmap) content, without a text layer.
  • All pages: Select this option to process pages regardless of components.
    • Process documents using OCR: Select this option to process documents by OCR only. Internally all pages are converted to bitmap format, and then processed by OCR. This method drops all non-visual and non-standard elements (for example, hidden or covered objects, text using fonts with non-standard character codes), and may be useful if the standard conversion to searchable PDF procedure fails.
    • Recognize non-standard encoded pages: Select this option to process pages containing their own fonts and/or special character encoding.
Automatically proofread results after OCR
(Accessible only in Power PDF) Select this option to run interactive spell checking on the processed document. Click User Dictionaries to add or create your own vocabularies.
Look for image-only pages automatically (requires restart)
(Accessible only in Power PDF) If this option is selected, then Power PDF checks every PDF when opened, and if the document has image-only pages, then offers conversion to searchable PDF. The checking procedure can be time-consuming, so this option is cleared by default.
Inform in notification bar
(Accessible only in Power PDF, enabled only if the preceding check box is selected.) Select Inform in notification bar to let Power PDF inform you about image-only pages in the notification bar, placed under the ribbon. Click Make Searchable to display the Auto Detection dialog box and select from the OCR options to apply on the image-only pages.
Clear Inform in notification bar to let Power PDF show the Auto Detection dialog without notification, just as soon as image-only pages found.

Note When an input file is a text file or has an accessible text layer, then a standard searchable PDF is created without OCR running, so the OCR language and reject character settings are not used in those cases.