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What Is OCR (and When to Use It)
Turn scanned pages and photos into searchable, copyable text — no more retyping.
Quick steps
- Open the OCR tool. Head to pdfoncall.com/ocr.
- Add a scanned PDF or image. Drop the file — it stays on your device.
- Run OCR. PDFOnCall recognizes the text on every page.
- Download. Get a searchable PDF you can copy from and edit downstream.
What OCR does
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) reads text out of images. A scanned page is a photo — you can't search or copy it. OCR converts those pixels into real text.
When you need it
- Old contracts you scanned to PDF years ago.
- Receipts and forms you photographed on your phone.
- Book chapters or research papers you need to quote.
Languages
English by default, with more languages available in the picker. Accuracy is best on clean, high-resolution scans.