Updated: Acrobat Applescript for ScanSnap OCR

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.

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About the Author

Brooks Duncan helps individuals and small businesses go paperless. He's been an accountant, a software developer, a manager in a very large corporation, and has run DocumentSnap since 2008. You can find Brooks on Twitter at @documentsnap or @brooksduncan. Thanks for stopping by.

Leave a Reply 17 comments

Chris - October 25, 2011 Reply

Brooks,

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

Chris - October 20, 2011 Reply

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

Chris - October 20, 2011 Reply

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.

Brooks Duncan - October 20, 2011 Reply

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.

Chris - October 19, 2011 Reply

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

Brooks Duncan - October 19, 2011 Reply

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?

Chris - October 19, 2011 Reply

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?

Orin - January 21, 2011 Reply

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!

Sascha - May 29, 2011 Reply

I am in the same boat. I am using Acrobat X now and the script no longer works. Any more thoughts on automating this?

Brooks Duncan - August 5, 2011 Reply

Hi, I may have something for you. Please see this post: http://www.documentsnap.com/ocr-applescript-for-a…

Michael - March 19, 2010 Reply

Any chance this works in Acroboat 7 Pro?

Chiphead - February 27, 2010 Reply

Is there something comparable for Win 7?

Brooks Duncan - March 2, 2010 Reply

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…

Chiphead - March 5, 2010 Reply

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

nodis - February 19, 2010 Reply

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.