Text recognition programs - these tools exist
Copy the text from a scanned page? It can't be that difficult ... That's right! With the right text recognition program (Optical Character Recognition, or OCR for short) it works in a few seconds. We show you which different tools are available and whether they always have to cost a lot of money.
Free text recognition with FreeOCR
- The free software "FreeOCR" not only enables text recognition from the scanned PDF file, but also converts the text into Word format.
- Unfortunately, the program is only available in English, but the program also converts German text reliably.
Recognize texts with Adobe Acrobat
- Adobe Acrobat also recognizes texts and enables extensive editing. You can find the latest version here (for a fee).
Paid text recognition software
- One of the best OCR programs is "Abbyy FineReader": You can even convert photos and tables with it. But the whole thing also has its price: the software currently costs around 130 euros; You can test the tool free of charge for 14 days.
- A slightly cheaper alternative is the latest version of "Readiris": The text recognition software costs around 60 euros.
We have put together many other tips for editing PDF files here.