I am downloading a lot of PDFs from the New York Times archives (c. 1855) for some historical research I'm doing. I assume the Times has OCR'd their images of these old articles because the text is word-searchable online. Here are my questions, in descending order of the elation they might evoke. (BTW, I'm on a Mac, running Leopard.) 1.

Is the OCR text somehow hidden in the downloaded PDFs and how would I discover and retrieve it, using Acrobat Pro 9? Would it be worth trying Acrobat's built in OCR tools?

By default, Acrobat will save the recognized text inside the original file when you OCR a PDF, and if you OCR an image it'll save the image with its text in a new PDF file. Either way, the recognized text will show up in any PDF reader afterwards, just as if it was an original digital document. Adobe Acrobat Pro License kEY is a complete portfolio of secure digital document solutions. Acrobat Pro DC Activation Key licenses purchased through Duke include only the desktop application, and do not include eSign services, or web and mobile apps that integrate into your existing document processes, productivity apps and systems.

Times type is pretty wavy and clunky.) 3. Given that Macs can now word-search documents' body text, can I at least put key words in text box notes or stickies on these PDFs, to help me find important passages? (I've tried both text boxes and stickies but it didn't work.) Thanks. I am not going to do much for your elation meter but I can give you a little help with number 3. If you put keywords into a PDF's metadata, your Mac can find them.

I am running Snow Leopard and it couldn't find keywords in text boxes or stickies but it DID find them in metadata. I am expecting Leopard will perform the same. Go to File>Properties>Description>Keywords to insert keywords into a PDF.Regarding number 2, I would try a page and see what you think of the results.

It's easy enough to try. If you end up with lots of manual correcting, your keyword idea will probably be simpler. Hezekiah-1812 wrote:Thanks, Merlin.

I'll give the OCR tools a try. Your site and those links look interesting but are in French, which I 'no parlay voo.' Yes, Acrobat's OCR cannot automatically translate OCRized documents We should ask Adobe to add this feature!:-))) French is not difficult to learn, more than half of English language words are common with French language.;-) In any case, you can test my portfolios by searching words like 'John Warnock', 'Adobe', 'Bill Gates', 'Microsoft', 'Steve Job', 'Apple', etc. Those words are also shared in both languages. I'm back with a follow up question. I tried Googling this but didn't get a satisfactory answer. Do Acrobat Pro 9's OCR tools allow one to convert text in a PDF image *on screen*?

I seem to recall reading somewhere that you can scan a hard copy, paper sample that will 'teach' the OCR tool to 'read' such type on screen thereafter. But I lost track of where I read this — or I'm imagining it!

I'd be willing to buy a plug-in or third party vendor tool. For instance, I saw this online for $113: ABBYY FineReader Express Edition for Mac. But couldn't figure out from the description if it can do this. Maybe I can't find an answer online because it can't be done! I just have too many 1855 New York Times articles to scan them all. If I can't OCR them on screen, I just might as well keyboard the relevant passages I need.

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