Extracting text from a PDF file can be considered a professional task that usually occurs in businesses. This makes text extraction from PDFs an essential task for many. It is essential because the information inside PDFs is un-editable. And professional documents often require modification.Â
But how to do this in an efficient manner? This is the real question, and we will answer it for you. In the following section, we have discussed two of the main PDF extraction methods.
Methods
How Can Text be extracted from PDFs?
Text can either be extracted manually or by taking help from online tools.
Manual Extraction
Manual Extraction involves a person looking at a PDF file and typing the data in it elsewhere. In this way, the information inside the PDF is converted into text and can be altered. This process requires extreme focus for prolonged time spans.
Also, if this method is used, the rate of errors in the final output can also be quite high.
Automatic/OCR Extraction
Automatic or OCR-powered text extraction can be achieved with the help of online tools. With these tools, you can extract text from PDF in moments. This method is much more reliable and quicker compared to the previous one.
The only action required to use this method is uploading the PDF file into an OCR-based text extraction tool. The rest is taken care of.
How to Extract Text from PDFs Using OCR
In the following, we will show you how you can use an OCR tool for converting PDFs into editable text. The first step is to obviously find a tool for this. There are many options available on the internet, and most of them work in a similar manner.
After choosing a tool, follow these steps:
Upload your PDF file into the tool.
Some tools show you a preview of the inserted PDF. Once this is shown, click on the action button. It is usually labeled as submit or convert.
After that, the tool will process your PDF and give you the result in text form
Some tools give the option to download these results as documents, while others only give a copying option.
Benefits of OCR PDF Text Extraction
Now you know how to use an OCR tool for text extraction. But why should you choose this method when there is the option of manual extraction? Here, we have discussed some main benefits of OCR-based PDF-to-text conversion that manual conversion won’t give you.
1. Instant Document Editing
Documents in the form of PDFs often contain data that needs changing from time to time. For example, you might find technical errors in a document after finalizing it. But since it is in PDF form, you can’t make changes.
For this purpose, automatic text extraction is used so that all the other information remains the same and the faulty section of the document is edited.
2. Improved Document Accessibility
Another advantage of converting your PDFs into text using OCR is the improvement in their accessibility. With OCR-driven PDF text extractors, you can convert mass PDFs into text files. This makes them easily searchable and instantly accessible.
This is not possible with manual conversion, as it would take a very long time to convert every PDF document of your business into text.
3. Enhanced Compatibility
PDFs are great file formats. However, over time, there have been some changes. Some PDF formats are now outdated and are not compatible with various processing software. This can be a challenge in business interactions.
That’s another reason to keep a text-based copy of your PDF documents. These text documents are accessible everywhere and make a bunch of interactions more streamlined.
Conclusion
In order to prevent the various challenges faced by businesses due to paper documents, most of them now use PDF documents. However, this file format has its own limitations. For example, no liberty to make changes in the document restricts the users quite a bit.
For that reason, there is a need to convert these PDFs into editable text. This is done best with the help of OCR tools. These tools unlock the full potential of PDF files and make digital document management much easier.
