badloScanned PDF vs Digital PDF: How to Tell the Difference
Updated
Two PDFs can look identical on screen and behave completely differently when you convert them. The reason comes down to whether the file holds real text or only a picture of text.
What's the difference?
| Digital PDF | Scanned PDF | |
|---|---|---|
| How it's made | Exported from Word, Excel, a website or an app | Scanned from paper, or built from photos |
| What's inside | Real text and shapes | A picture of each page |
| Select and copy text | Yes | No, unless OCR has been run on it |
| Search for a word | Yes | No, unless OCR has been run on it |
| Zooming in | Stays sharp | Eventually gets blurry |
The 10-second test
- Open the PDF in your browser or PDF viewer.
- Try to highlight a single word by dragging across it.
- If only that word is selected, the file has real text, so it is digital.
- If nothing is selected, or a box covers the whole page, it is a scan.
- As a second check, press Ctrl+F or Cmd+F and search for a word you can see on the page.
What this means for our tools
Tools that make images work on both kinds, because they only need to draw the page. Tools that extract text need real text to be present.
| Tool | Digital PDF | Scanned PDF |
|---|---|---|
| PDF to Word | Editable text | Page images, with no editable text |
| PDF to Excel | Tables and text in cells | Little or nothing |
| PDF to PowerPoint | Works well | Works well |
| PDF to JPG | Works well | Works well |
| PDF to PNG | Works well | Works well |
What to do with a scanned PDF
If you need to edit a scan, you need OCR (optical character recognition), which reads the letters in a picture. Our OCR PDF tool does this for clear English text, and our guide on making a scanned PDF searchable shows how.
How to get better scans
If you are working with phone photos, see how to turn phone photos into one PDF.
- Scan at 300 DPI if your scanner lets you choose.
- Keep pages straight and free of shadows.
- Ask for the original file instead. A digital copy is always better than a scan.
