Need to convert a scanned PDF to text? Scanned PDFs and image-based documents are everywhere: contracts, receipts, invoices, book pages, and medical records. This guide shows how to convert a PDF to text with OCR locally in Chrome, without uploading the document to a cloud service.

ConvertForge includes local OCR powered by Tesseract, running entirely in your browser. No upload. No account. Your documents never leave your device. OCR for JPG and PNG images is included in Free; OCR for scanned PDFs is a Pro feature.

Quick answer: a text-based PDF already contains selectable text, while a scanned PDF stores each page as an image and needs OCR. ConvertForge reads that PDF image locally and exports the recognized content as plain text.

Why PDFs Are Often Image-Only

Not all PDFs contain selectable text. When a document is created from a scan, a photo, or a fax, the PDF is essentially a container for an image — there's no text layer the system can read. You can open it, you can print it, but you can't copy a single word.

This matters whenever you need to:

OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is the technology that extracts text from images. Most OCR tools work by sending your file to a server for processing. ConvertForge runs OCR locally using Tesseract — an open-source OCR engine that's been around for decades and is accurate enough for most real-world documents.

How to Convert PDF to Text with ConvertForge

Five steps, nothing uploaded:

Step 1 — Install ConvertForge Visit wendygostudio.com/convertforge/ to install the extension for Chrome.

Step 2 — Open ConvertForge Click the ConvertForge icon in your Chrome toolbar.

Step 3 — Drop your PDF Drag the PDF onto the ConvertForge panel. The drag-and-drop router detects the file type automatically. Works with standard PDFs and scanned documents.

Step 4 — Select Text as the output ConvertForge shows the detected input format and lets you choose the output. Select plain text (.txt) to get the extracted content.

Step 5 — Copy or download the text Processing happens locally. When it's done, copy the text directly or download it as a .txt file. Nothing left your device.

When Local OCR Is Especially Useful

Not every PDF needs local OCR. But these use cases make it worth it:

Confidential contracts — Legal documents you need to review or edit should never go through an uncontrolled server. Local OCR means you stay in control.

Medical records — Scanned health records often arrive as PDFs. Extracting text locally is the only sensible option if patient data is involved.

Financial documents — Invoices, bank statements, tax forms. You may need to extract line items for a spreadsheet. Uploading these to a random OCR tool is a significant risk.

Old scanned books or research papers — You have a PDF scan of a 1980s technical manual. You want to search it, quote from it, or feed it to an AI assistant. Local OCR makes that possible without cloud dependencies.

Receipts for expense reports — Snap a receipt, drop the image or PDF into ConvertForge, and get the text ready to paste.

How Accurate Is Local OCR?

Tesseract accuracy depends on the quality of the source document. For clean, high-resolution scans — standard office documents, professional contracts, printed books — accuracy is typically very high. For handwritten text, low-resolution faxes, or documents with complex layouts, results vary.

Practical advice:

ConvertForge applies Tesseract without any preprocessing modifications — what you get is the standard Tesseract output on your document as-is.

Text vs. Searchable PDF

There's a related use case worth knowing: you can also use OCR to create a searchable PDF (a PDF where the text layer is embedded alongside the image). ConvertForge outputs plain text; if you need a searchable PDF instead, you'd need a different workflow. But for most everyday needs — extracting content, pasting into another tool, processing programmatically — plain text is exactly what you need.

FAQ

Is scanned-PDF OCR free in ConvertForge? No. OCR for scanned PDFs is a Pro feature. OCR for JPG and PNG images is available in the free version. Both run locally with Tesseract.

Does ConvertForge send my PDFs to a server? No. ConvertForge is a Chrome extension. OCR runs locally on your device using the Tesseract engine. Your files are never sent to any server.

What languages does the OCR support? Tesseract supports over 100 languages. ConvertForge uses Tesseract's bundled language models.

Can I convert a scanned image (not a PDF) to text? Yes. ConvertForge's OCR works on image files as well — JPG, PNG, and other common image formats.

What's the difference between a text-based PDF and a scanned PDF? A text-based PDF has a selectable text layer — you can click and drag to highlight text. A scanned PDF is essentially a photo inside a container; you can't select text because it doesn't exist as text, only as pixels.