Why Text Can't Be Extracted from a PDF (Scanned PDFs)
Key points
- Scanned PDFs are images with no text data
- Whether you can select text tells you which it is
- Use OCR (text recognition) if needed
If you see "No text was found", the following may be the case.
Cause: an image-only PDF
Documents scanned on a printer or photographed with a phone camera have images inside the PDF. They look like text but have no text data, so it can't be extracted.
How to tell
Open the PDF and try selecting text by dragging a finger or the mouse. If you can't, it is an image PDF.
What to do
- If you have the original file: remake the PDF from the original, such as in Word
- If you really need the text: you need a technology called OCR (text recognition). This tool has no OCR feature.
Extra note
OCR can make reading errors. Always check results by eye.
Use "Extract Text from PDF" (free)Tools that go well with this
- PDF to Images: Save each page of a PDF as a JPEG or PNG image.
- Extract or Delete PDF Pages: Keep only the pages you need, or remove the pages you don't.
- Compress PDF: Shrink a PDF to fit under a size you choose, for upload limits.