WalkingPDF

guide

Making a scanned production searchable

A scanned page without a text layer still displays, prints and numbers correctly - it is simply invisible to search, to highlighting and to every review platform's analytics. Finding those pages before service is cheap; finding them after is a supplemental production. This page covers how the text layer is detected, what OCR has to achieve, and why the audit reports the gap rather than filling it.

How the check detects a missing text layer

For each page the audit extracts text and measures how much it found against the page's own area and ink. A page with no extractable characters is reported as a page that was never processed. A page with a few characters - a header, a stamp, a Bates number - is reported separately, because partial text is usually a half-finished run rather than a clean scan.

  • No text layer: warning on Pro, blocker at Matter.
  • Partial text layer: warning, because the reviewer can search some pages and not others.
  • Both findings name the file and the page, so the OCR run can be scoped precisely.

What OCR has to achieve to be worth doing

OCR that produces a text layer misaligned with the image is worse than none: the reviewer highlights a sentence and the search hit is somewhere else. A usable run keeps the original image, adds an invisible text layer positioned against it, and does not re-render the page. That is why the audit checks extraction after a run rather than trusting the tool's own report.

What we do not do

We do not OCR at launch. The audit reports which pages need it, and after a run it reports whether the pages now have a text layer. Recognising text is a Prepare capability; deciding whether a set is ready to serve is what this product does.

Frequently asked questions

Is a page with no text layer a blocker?

On Pro it is a warning: the set can be served, but it will not be fully searchable. At Matter it is treated as a blocker, because a large set with unsearchable pages is a review problem, not a cosmetic one.

Can the free checker tell me if one PDF is searchable?

Yes - text presence is one of the eight free checks, on a single file up to 200 pages.

Keep reading

tool Check a PDF for production defects Upload one PDF and get a plain-language result for eight production checks: text layer, Bates gaps, duplicate Bates numbers, extractable stamp text, page size and rotation drift, redaction leakage, and whether the file opens at all. No account or email address is needed, and the uploaded file is checked in a temporary directory and discarded. guide Why Bates numbers show up in keyword search A stamp is either an image drawn on the page or text added to the content stream. When it is text, it stays in the text layer, and every keyword search for that number or for a stray date inside it returns the page. Receiving parties use stamped numbers as identifiers, so a searchable stamp quietly pollutes their results - and in the worst case leaks a number into a privilege log as if it were document content. hub Watermark glossary A short glossary of the words used around PDF watermarking, each defined in one or two sentences before any detail: what a watermark is, the difference between text and image marks, what diagonal, background, tiled and confidential mean, and why a dynamic watermark is not the same as a fixed one. Every term links back to the page that shows it in use. guide How to watermark a PDF To watermark a PDF, upload the file, choose a watermark style, type your wording, set the opacity to somewhere between 25% and 35%, apply it to every page and download the marked copy. The whole procedure takes about a minute in a browser, needs no software, and the original file is not changed - you keep the marked copy as a new file. guide What is a PDF watermark? A PDF watermark is text or an image placed on the pages of a document to say something about it - who it belongs to, what state it is in, or who may read it. It becomes part of the page rather than a note attached to the file, so it appears in prints, screenshots and single-page extracts, and it carries no technical protection: anyone can still open, copy and forward the document. guide Batch watermarking PDF files Batch watermarking means applying the same mark to several PDFs so they look like one set. With a browser tool you do it by settling the settings once - style, wording, opacity, colour - then running the tool once per file with those same settings, which takes under a minute each and produces consistent output without installing anything or creating an account.