How to make Google Drive perform OCR on a PDF I upload

google-driveocr

I have a PDF which is a scan of a few pages of a book. I want to be able to search inside this PDF for specific terms. I know OCR can be performed on files in Google Drive. However, I don't seem to be able to initiate this manually, and the PDF I upload doesn't seem to have selectable text (I can't even search for phrases in it from the search bar in Google Drive). Is there a way to "force OCR" it?

Best Answer

Now that you uploaded a scanned PDF (or an image file), do this:

  1. Browse to the GDrive web interface.
  2. Right-click on your uploaded image file.
  3. Invoke the Open with > Google Docs menu command.

See the relevant Google Drive help page for details and tips. E.g. the text must be right side up and in a common, readable font; the file should be 2 MB or less, and the text should be at least 10 pixels high.

See this Tuts+ tutorial for more details and tips.

Another tip: Web search for GDrive OCR finds these articles.

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