What is a searchable PDF

What does it mean by a "searchable PDF"

ocr software download: Things to consider

Any good searchable PDF software should convert a scanned document to a searchable digital file which can be indexed by your file system. So searchable PDF is a very common term that is used in the digital document scanning technology. There are OCR automation software like OCRvision  which can help you make pdf searchable without acrobat

So what is a searchable PDF? 

A good OCR software can make PDF searchable? Before that let's have a look at the PDF format for data representation. A normal PDF file is a machine and technology independent way to transfer documents across different operating system platforms, just like HTML is a standard way to represent web pages. PDF document contains metadata information embedded in the document, so that it render same in any platform. A normal PDF can be searched. You can copy text from a normal PDF.

Then comes the scanned PDF. You can scan any file or photo to a PDF format using any network scanner. A normal scanned PDF is just an image embedded inside the PDF frame. You can't copy text or find the contents in the search results. Because it is in image format.

Then comes the searchable PDF. You can make any scanned PDF searchable. A searchable PDF is a normal scanned PDF with an invisible text layer on top of it. Any Searchable PDF automation software can make a scanned PDF searchable. It runs a text detection algorithm against the text in image and create an invisible layer of text which can be copied just like a normal PDF file.