Adobe Acrobat Pro 7 & OCR Error

[amdnVuser]

When I try to perform OCR on a PDF of an article image, I get an error saying that Acrobat cannot perform OCR on the page (it says this on all pages) because it contains renderable text. Is there any way around this?

 

[Joemonkey]

google is your

friend

sounds like you are trying to use OCR on text that is already rendered.

 

[amdnVuser]

Originally posted by: Joemonkey
google is your

friend

sounds like you are trying to use OCR on text that is already rendered.

Wow, thanks for the tip. I've never heard of Google.

Anyway, to be more specific, I meant is there a way to get around this in Acrobat itself without having to export the PDF as 20+ TIFF files (for larger PDF articles) and then convert the TIFF's back to PDF. My searches on this mysterious Google you speak of yielded no answers.

 

[remagavon]

You could ask adobe, just register your Acrobat Professional 7 and you're eligible for their complimentary person to person support.

 

[amdnVuser]

I'm actually using a volume license at work, so I don't know if I'm eligible. I'll ask whoever's in charge of software licensing/procurement.

 

[remagavon]

Yeah I'm sure you would be eligble for some kind of support then, especially if your workplace took advantage of volume pricing discounts and offers. Midas well take advantage of not pirating

 

[corkyg]

If you have Acrobat 7, you consider PDF files as already "rendered." OCR is not appropriate. What exactly do you need to do? Edit the PDF file or convert it to a word processor format?

I have Acrobat 7 installed, and can't replicate your problem. ???

 

[Joemonkey]

my guess is mr. smart ass has a document with half rendered text and half images and would like it to all be rendered text

 

[amdnVuser]

Originally posted by: Joemonkey
my guess is mr. smart ass has a document with half rendered text and half images and would like it to all be rendered text

I'm the smart ass? IIRC, you're the one who implied I'm too stupid to try to search for answers on the Web. Your first reply is nothing less than a smart ass comment. Don't complain if you can't handle your own BS thrown back at you.

Yes, I do have documents with only a single line of text (that was already rendered) at the beginning or end of every page (the body of each page is an image of an article's pages with text, no graphics, that was scanned...and no, I didn't create these PDF's nor do I know who did...I just want to be able to quickly search for text without having to read a couple hundred pages...it just seems like there should be an easier way to do so). I wanted to know if Acrobat's OCR can ignore this single line of rendered text and capture the remaining portions of the page bodies. I guess I'm crazy for wanting to avoid having to export all the pages as images, converting them back to PDF's, then capturing the page so that I can search for text.

I guess my Topic title didn't accurately reflect what I'm trying to ask, so I'll be more specific next time so my IQ doesn't come into question.

 

[corkyg]

If you have full Acrobat 7, you can edit the PDF files as is. No need to convert to anything. ???

 

[Mday]

Originally posted by: amdnVuser
When I try to perform OCR on a PDF of an article image, I get an error saying that Acrobat cannot perform OCR on the page (it says this on all pages) because it contains renderable text. Is there any way around this?

well, you're supposed to perform OCR before making a PDF... but.

What do the pages look like? OCR is no where near perfect. the better OCR programs cost $$$.

 

[Joemonkey]

Originally posted by: corkyg
If you have full Acrobat 7, you can edit the PDF files as is. No need to convert to anything. ???

I'm assuming what happened is whoever made the PDFs had images scanned in, then added text and saved it. OCR is freaking out because there is already renderable text.

Here is an official knowledgebase article from Adobe on the subject.

If I were the OP, after I take the stick out of my butt, I would bite the bullet and do the TIFF conversion, there doesn't seem to be any other way around it. If you had searched teh intarweb properly you would know this!

 

[amdnVuser]

I did search the Web properly, and Adobe's support site was one of the first places I looked. I know that they say you have to convert to TIFF first, but I just thought that there's got to be a way around this (i.e. maybe not supported/recommended by Adobe).

And if you think that being a smart ass to a smart ass means that someone has a stick up his/her butt, then I think we both need rectal exams.

 

[Joemonkey]

Originally posted by: amdnVuser
I did search the Web properly, and Adobe's support site was one of the first places I looked. I know that they say you have to convert to TIFF first, but I just thought that there's got to be a way around this (i.e. maybe not supported/recommended by Adobe).

And if you think that being a smart ass to a smart ass means that someone has a stick up his/her butt, then I think we both need rectal exams.

Its a date!

If Adobe says to do it that way, and places like experts-exchange and other tech sites say to do it that way, chances are no one is working on an alternate method.

Sorry I got your panties in a bunch, I was just giving you a hard time, welcome to AT!