How to Convert Scanned PDF Receipts into Searchable Text with OCR

# How to Convert Scanned PDF Receipts into Searchable Text with OCR When you scan a physical sheet of paper with a scanner or snap a photo of a receipt with your phone, the resulting PDF is simply a container holding an image. You cannot highlight the text, search with Ctrl+F, or copy numbers into Excel. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) solves this problem by using neural networks to identify individual character glyphs. --- ## 1. How OCR Works in Modern Web Browsers Historically, OCR required heavy desktop software. Today, using WebAssembly and deep learning models (such as Tesseract.js), character recognition runs directly inside your web browser. 1. The PDF page is rasterized into a high-contrast canvas bitmap. 2. The neural model scans character lines, analyzing loops, stems, and ascenders. 3. Identified glyphs are converted into structured UTF-8 text. --- ## 2. Supported Languages HoudiniPDF supports multi-language recognition: * English (eng) * Spanish (spa) * French (fra) * German (deu) * Portuguese (por) --- ## 3. How to OCR Your Documents on HoudiniPDF 1. Visit **[OCR PDF](/ocr-pdf)**. 2. Select your scanned PDF document or image file. 3. Pick the language of your document. 4. Click **Recognize Text (OCR)**. 5. Once processing finishes, copy the extracted text or download a clean .txt document.