Convert PDF to Searchable PDF in C#

Perform optical character recognition on PDF document and save text as PDF document using Aspose.OCR for .NET library.

How to convert PDF to Searchable PDF using C#

Aspose.OCR for .NET is a powerful yet easy-to-use and cost-effective library for converting PDF images to Searchable PDF documents. Supporting 26 languages based on Latin, Cyrillic and Chinese, its state-of-the-art optical character recognition engine provides superior recognition speed and accuracy, while isolating you from formulas, neural networks, and other complex technical details. It allows you to add OCR functionality to your .NET applications in less than 10 lines of code.

Aspose.OCR for .NET

processes scanned images or even smartphone photos in PDF format and creates PDF documents containing recognized text. To add it to your project, you just need to install the Aspose.OCR

NuGet

package in your project with the following command:

Package Manager Console Command
  PM> Install-Package Aspose.OCR

Steps to Convert PDF to Searchable PDF

With .NET OCR and just a few lines of code, you can create full-featured application that converts an PDF image to Searchable PDF document:

Create an instance of AsposeOcr class
Call AsposeOCR.RecognizeImage method
Pass the PDF file path as parameter
AsposeOCR.RecognizeImage returns a String or file of Searchable PDF type

System Requirements

Before running the example, make sure that .NET API compatible with NET Standard 2.0 specification is installed on your system and all external dependencies of Aspose.OCR package are referenced in your project.

NET Standard 2.0+ compatible solution
Aspose.OCR for .NET referenced in your project.

This sample code shows PDF to Searchable PDF .NET Conversion
// initialize an instance of AsposeOcr
AsposeOcr ocr = new AsposeOcr();
// recognize image
string riText = ocr.RecognizeImage("template.PDF");
// print text
File. File.WriteAllText("document.Searchable PDF", riText);

PDF What is PDF File Format

Portable Document Format (PDF) is a type of document created by Adobe back in 1990s. The purpose of this file format was to introduce a standard for representation of documents and other reference material in a format that is independent of application software, hardware as well as Operating System. The PDF file format has full capability to contain information like text, images, hyperlinks, form-fields, rich media, digital signatures, attachments, metadata, Geospatial features and 3D objects in it that can become as part of source document.

Searchable PDF What is Searchable PDF File Format

Searchable PDF files retain the original scanned image for viewing, as well as OCR text in a hidden layer that can be used for full-text searches within a document or highlighting text for copy and paste operations. Full OCR conversion to PDF, not including the original image, will never retain 100% of the original formatting, especially if the document has many images or a complex layout.

Other Supported Conversions

Using C#, one can easily convert different formats including.

TXT (Text Document File)

Text (Text Document File)

DOC (Documents generated by Microsoft Word)

DOCX (Microsoft Word documents)

XLS (Microsoft Excel Binary File Format)

XLSX (Microsoft Excel documents)

PDF (Portable Document Format (PDF))

Searchable PDF (Searchable Portable Network Graphics )

XML (Extensible Markup Language)

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)