Optical Character Recognition Scanning (OCR)

A brief guide explaining how PaperCut automatically uses OCR to make scanned PDFs searchable and selectable.

OCR is enabled by default for PaperCut scanning. This means documents scanned through PaperCut will automatically be processed so the text in the scan can be recognized by a computer.

What is OCR?

OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. It turns text in a scanned image or PDF into searchable and selectable text.

For example, after scanning a printed document, you may be able to search the PDF for a name or keyword instead of reading through every page manually. 

You can also highlight and copy the texts within the scanned documents. 

OCR Usage TIPS

OCR works best with clear, typed text and good quality scans.

Handwriting, blurry pages, unusual fonts, or very small text may not be recognized perfectly.

OCR does not change the appearance of the original scan; it adds a searchable text layer behind the page image.

Shortcuts for searching within a document

Windows - pressing together Ctrl + F 

Mac - pressing together Command + F

See Also


Keywords:
PaperCut OCR scan scanning scanner searchable PDF text recognition optical character recognition document search PDF scan to email scan to OneDrive accessibility copier printer searchable document convert scan text extract text scanned document PaperCut scan searchable text PDF OCR document scanning multifunction printer MFP 
Doc ID:
165200
Owned by:
Tenchi X. in UW Stout
KnowledgeBase
Created:
2026-10-29
Updated:
2026-10-29
Sites:
UW Stout