Updated: Acrobat Applescript for ScanSnap OCR

by on February 16, 2010 in Processing, Software

As many of you know, in 2008 I posted an Applescript that will use Adobe Acrobat to make PDFs searchable using Acrobat’s OCR capabilities.

In the comments to that post, user nodis pointed out that adding 2 words to one of the lines can make the PDFs quite a bit smaller.

In my testing, I ran a 1.3 MB PDF through the script. Before nodis’ change, the resulting PDF was 1.7 MB. After the change, it was 424K!

Here is the updated script:

OCRIt-Acrobat – Droplet to batch OCR PDFs in Adobe Acrobat

To use it:

  • Download and uncompress the file and save it to your Desktop, Dock or wherever
  • Drag one or more PDFs onto the icon
  • Enjoy

Let me know how it works out for you and if you see similar reductions in file size.

Update: If you use Acrobat X, please see this post about OCR AppleScript for Acrobat X.



Related posts:

  1. Acrobat Applescript For ScanSnap OCR
  2. Making Acrobat OCR’ed PDFs Smaller With Formatted Text & Graphics
  3. Use Acrobat Batch Processing To OCR Your PDFs Easily
  4. Doing OCR Batch Processing Using The ScanSnap And ABBYY FineReader
  5. Found: ScanSnap Applescript to remove ABBYY FineReader file

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17 Responses to “Updated: Acrobat Applescript for ScanSnap OCR”

  1. John February 18, 2010 at 2:36 pm #

    Will this only work with Acrobat 9? If so, is there an equivalent command for Acrobat 8? Thanks.

    Reply
    • BrooksD February 22, 2010 at 12:51 am #

      Hi John, sorry for the late reply. It should work fine for Acrobat 8. That's what I have.

      Reply
  2. nodis February 19, 2010 at 12:42 pm #

    The edited script should work with Acrobat 8 as well — but I don't have a copy installed to test. However, the extreme space savings will probably be seen only with Acrobat 9, which has a superb new OCR flavor as the default: ClearScan.

    More about ClearScan here: <http://blogs.adobe.com/acrolaw/2009/05/better_pdf…

    The revised droplet, plus ClearScan, are what add up to all the space savings with Acro 9.

    Reply
  3. Chiphead February 27, 2010 at 3:03 pm #

    Is there something comparable for Win 7?

    Reply
    • BrooksD March 2, 2010 at 3:57 pm #

      Hi Chiphead, I'm not aware of a scripting language built into Windows 7. However, if what you're looking for is batch OCR'ing in Acrobat, maybe this post will help? http://www.documentsnap.com/use-acrobat-batch-pro…

      Reply
      • Chiphead March 5, 2010 at 6:25 pm #

        Many thaks Brooks. I'll take a look. Appreciate your response.

        Reply
  4. Michael March 19, 2010 at 3:27 pm #

    Any chance this works in Acroboat 7 Pro?

    Reply
  5. Orin January 21, 2011 at 10:55 am #

    I just upgraded to Acrobat X (10) and the script no longer works. If someone with some scripting know how could make a new new/updated OCR script droplet it would be MUCH appreciated. Thanks!

    Reply
  6. Chris October 19, 2011 at 4:27 pm #

    Hi Brooks,

    Thanks so much for this script. It worked beautifully for me under Snow Leopard, but since I upgraded to Lion I'm getting a lot of errors and Acrobat crashes. I'm not using Acrobat X – I'm still using Acrobat 9. Any ideas?

    Reply
  7. Chris October 19, 2011 at 4:28 pm #

    BTW, the error I get is "Connection is invalid -609"

    Reply
    • BrooksD October 19, 2011 at 5:08 pm #

      This is going to sound weird, but can you try opening the PDF first in Finder, close it, then try running the script on it?

      Reply
  8. Chris October 20, 2011 at 11:14 am #

    By open in Finder, I assume you mean double-click the PDF so it opens in Acrobat? I did that, and then closed Acrobat. Then dragged the PDF on top of the OCR-It script. Acrobat crashed, and I got the same -609 error.

    Reply
    • BrooksD October 20, 2011 at 11:19 am #

      Actually (please bear with me here), if you could right-click on the file, choose Open With, open it in Preview, and then close it, and then try dragging and see if that makes a difference.I don't know why this would be an issue but I came across a similar problem while Googling, so I want to see if that does the trick.

      Reply
  9. Chris October 20, 2011 at 11:43 am #

    Thanks for helping me figure this out. I did as you suggested, and it didn't make a difference.

    Reply
  10. Chris October 25, 2011 at 10:41 am #

    Brooks,

    Anything else come to mind? Any alternatives? I'm really missing being able to use your script.

    Reply

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