Unable to edit pdf

[xd003]

Hello, this is very first time i am using PDF-XChange Editor. For some reason, i can't seem to edit the pdf. As soon as i click on edit text option and tap on the block of text, the text kind of greys out and i can't really edit it. There's no problem with the pdf itself since i can very well edit it properly using other pdf editors

PDF-Xchange Editor v10.1.3.383
Windows 11
Screenrecording of the issue - https://streamable.com/xq1vvo?src=player-page-share

[Willy Van Nuffel]

Hello,

When viewing your video, it appears that the PDF contains scanned pages with an invisible text layer.
I guess optical character recognition was applied to it. That places a text layer above the image of the page and makes the document "searchable."

When you open that same document with Adobe Acrobat, we can see that at the bottom of the window there is a message "Performing page recognition" followed by "Converting scanned page to Editable Text and Images". This allows you to edit the PDF.

If you have the PDF-XChange Editor Plus version with enhanced OCR, you can also convert the PDF to an editable version.
You will have to run this conversion manually. It does not happen automatically, like in Adobe Acrobat.
https://help.pdf-xchange.com/pdfxe10/ocr-pages_ed.html

Kind regards.

[xd003]

Hello,

When viewing your video, it appears that the PDF contains scanned pages with an invisible text layer.
I guess optical character recognition was applied to it. That places a text layer above the image of the page and makes the document "searchable."

When you open that same document with Adobe Acrobat, we can see that at the bottom of the window there is a message "Performing page recognition" followed by "Converting scanned page to Editable Text and Images". This allows you to edit the PDF.

If you have the PDF-XChange Editor Plus version with enhanced OCR, you can also convert the PDF to an editable version.
You will have to run this conversion manually. It does not happen automatically, like in Adobe Acrobat.
https://help.pdf-xchange.com/pdfxe10/ocr-pages_ed.html

Kind regards.

Thanks for the information
I don't have a pdf-xchange editor plus version atm since i only started trying this app today. Although my friend who recommended me pdf-xchange has it. He tried doing OCR to my pdf using the enhanced OCR option and i was able to edit it afterwards but it wasn't anywhere accurate, like i could find some characters not present in original pdf. So to resolve this, i used this cli tool called ocrmypdf which OCRed my pdf pretty accurately. Now i assumed pdf-xchange would be able to edit it very easily but it get the issue present in my video. is pdf-xchange only able to edit pdfs OCRed using its own ocr tool ?
Sorry if i am assuming anything incorrect

[Willy Van Nuffel]

Info about OCRmyPDF says "OCRmyPDF adds an OCR text layer to scanned PDF files, allowing them to be searched".

This means that you can search in the PDF. So, the PDF is "searchable", but it is still "not editable".

To make a PDF with scanned pages editable, the text in the images of the pages has to be recognized AND be replaced by real text via the OCR engine of your application (PDF-XChange Editor Plus or Adobe Acrobat).

I do not have Adobe Acrobat myself, so I do not know if you should save the converted PDF by Adobe and open it in PDF-XChange Editor, if it would be editable.

[xd003]

Yes you are very correct. I just confirmed it. Whatever section of the pdf, i edit with adobe and save it. PDF X-Change is able to edit that section as well. I guess i will open a different issue in ocr section for the inaccuracies in PDF X-Change's Enchanced OCR since Adobe is able to handle it well

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello xd003,

Yes - that other tool was also only adding an invisible layer of text on top of the existing images.

As you've figured - when the pixels are replaced with actual text - the result is then editable in our Editor as well.

Are you currently testing with the default or Enhanced OCR engine? As they use different recognition engines internally - and the EOCR (based on ABBYY's Fine Reader) will likely produce better results!

We are happy for you to start a new topic or continue with a sample document in this one.

Kind regards,
Stefan

[xd003]

i had got it tested with Enhanced OCR engine. Its unable to handle codes well. It seems to add extra characters in the code for some reason, it doesn't happen in Adobe's OCR so i hope it could be fixed. Here's a small example of the issue. I am attaching a screenshot comparing the original pdf on left and the EOCRed pdf on right. It has replaced the character '),' with 'b'
There are some other smaller inconsistencies as well

chrome_tklvqoGxOR.png

I am also attaching both the pdfs ( original & EOCRed )

141_dart_flutter EOCRed.pdf

141_dart_flutter.pdf

in this post for your reference

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello xd003,

Thanks! I managed to reproduce the issue (e.g. the missing @ in front of @override) - so will ask our devs to take a look and see if they can make any improvements!

Kind regards,
Stefan

[xd003]

In your bug report, can you also include the smaller inconsistencies like say with the bullet points here..

PDFXEdit_8igqUfPV4r.png

[Dimitar - PDF-XChange]

Thank you for the additional information.

We will add this to the support ticket.

Regards.