Written and fact-checked by the Convertify editorial team. We test every workflow on real documents (government forms, design exports, scanned IDs, source code) before publishing — and re-test on each review date to keep the steps current.
The "Image-Only" PDF Problem
We've all been there: You open a PDF, try to select a sentence to copy it, and... you can't. The cursor selects the entire page like a photo. This happens when a document is scanned as an image rather than text.
To fix this, you need OCR (Optical Character Recognition).
How to use Free OCR on Convertify
Our [OCR PDF Tool](/ocr-pdf) automatically recognizes text in your scanned documents.
Step-by-Step Guide:
Go to [Convertify OCR](/ocr-pdf).
Upload your scanned PDF.
Select the language of the document (default is English).
Click **Apply OCR**.
Download your new "Searchable PDF".
What Changed?
Your new PDF looks exactly the same, but now there is an invisible text layer over the image. You can:
**Ctrl+F / Cmd+F** to find specific keywords.
**Select and Copy** text into Word or Email.
**Read Aloud** using screen readers.
When to use OCR?
**Student Notes**: Search through hundreds of pages of scanned handouts.
**Legal Discovery**: Find specific names in scanned court documents.
