Making a PDF Text-Searchable using OCR (Step 3)

Except for the creditor matrix text file, all documents filed electronically with the court must be in Portable Document Format (PDF). Attachments and exhibits which are filed electronically in CM/ECF should be in text searchable PDF format whenever possible (the Court realizes documents such as maps, diagrams, and pictures will not be text searchable). However, pleadings/main documents filed electronically in CM/ECF must be in text searchable PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Standard or Adobe Acrobat Professional permits a filer to perform an Optimal Character Recognition ("OCR") scan that will convert the document to a text-searchable format. 

The following instructions apply only to Adobe Acrobat.

 A filer who uses software other than Adobe Acrobat to create a PDF must consult the software vendor for information on making the PDF text-searchable. 

Determine if the PDF is Text-Searchable

1. Open your PDF document in Adobe Acrobat.
2. Select Ctrl+A on your keyboard to open a search box in Adobe Acrobat.
3. If the text is selectable:
   1. Only searchable text in the document will be highlighted indicating your PDF is already searchable.
   2. Stop here. Proceed to Flattening a PDF.
4. If the entire page or document is selected as a single image, it is not searchable.
   Note: For non text-searchable documents, Adobe Acrobat may also display a prompt that states, "Text cannot be selected." It may provide an option to run text recognition (OCR) to make the document searchable. You may select Yes to proceed or follow the steps in the next section.
   

Text-Searchable (Step 3 Result) Only searchable text is highlighted in blue	Not Text-Searchable (Step 4 Result) Entire page is blue, not identifying text

Make the PDF Text-Searchable

If you have performed the steps above and have identified your document is not text-searchable (Step 4), you need to use the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature in Adobe Acrobat to make it text-searchable. This is particularly necessary for scanned documents, which are essentially image files and do not contain recognizable text by default. .

1. Open your PDF file in Adobe Acrobat.
2. Navigate to the Tools menu and select Scan & OCR.
3. In the Recognize Text toolbar, click In this File.
   
5. In the Recognize Text pop-up window, you can choose which pages to process. For a full document conversion, leave the selection as All pages.
6. Click Recognize Text to start the OCR process.
7. Once the process is complete, save the file to keep the changes. The PDF is now searchable. 
8. When all the pages in all documents are processed, try the same search to verify that each document now is text-searchable.