How to Use OneNote OCR for Scanned PDF or Image? (The Detailed Guide)

We usually use OneNote from Microsoft to take text notes, but sometimes, our notes need to include a scanned PDF document or an image for the sake of information. While that is good for viewing, you may not be able to select or edit the text inside that image or scanned PDF. So, in this OneNote OCR guide, we will teach you how you can get text from those uneditable formats while staying within the OneNote application.

Besides that, we also introduced another powerful OCR tool, which is also a professional PDF editor — UPDF. You might consider it as an alternative to OneNote. If you’re interested, please click the button below to download it, and I’ll explain in detail below why it’s worth trying.

Part 1. Does OneNote Have OCR?

Yes, Microsoft has added the OCR feature to its OneNote application. Now, users can utilize this feature to extract text from PDFs, screenshots, handwritten images, camera/mobile photos, and scans from portable or flatbed scanners. Moreover, this OCR technology supports extracting text from handwritten notes and currently supports 21 languages.

The process is extremely easy, but you may face content formatting and integrity issues while using this OCR. The good part is that you can use this feature on Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android platforms.

Note: OneNote OCR can extract text from images or PDFs, making it selectable, searchable, and copyable, but it does not directly make the text editable within the PDF itself. If you want to edit the text within the PDF, you'll need a dedicated PDF editor like UPDF, which offers OCR functionality to convert scanned PDFs into fully editable and searchable documents. It allows direct modifications to the document and supports more than 38 languages. More importantly, UPDF supports batch OCR, you can convert multiple scanned PDF files into editable formats simultaneously.

For editing PDF text after OCR, a tool like UPDF would be the better choice - interested users can click the button below to give it a try.

Part 2. How to Use OneNote to OCR PDF? (Scanned Documents)

You can use the OneNote application on your smartphone or PC to OCR your scanned PDF documents. The process goes by first adding the PDF documents in OneNote notebooks as printouts and then performing the OCR to copy text from those printouts. Below is a detailed guide on how OneNote can help you perform OCR on scanned documents.

1. Open the PDF as a printout in OneNote.

Open your OneNote application and open a Notebook in it. Now, you need to open PDF in OneNote, and for that, click "Insert" and "File Printout." It will take you to the browse window, where you need to select a PDF by clicking it and clicking "Open." Wait as the PDF Printout is processed and displayed in the OneNote notebook.

2. Right-click on the image and select the copy text option.

Once the PDF Printout displays, you need to right-click on it and select the option to copy text. In documents with multiple pages, you will get the following options:

• "Copy text from this page of the printout."
• "Copy text from all the pages of the printout."

You can select either one depending on the content that you want to copy.

3. Paste text from the PDF.

Now click anywhere else in the same document and press "Ctrl + V." It will paste all the copied text in editable text form. Similarly, you may paste it into any other file, document, or application for editing and reusing purposes.

Part 3. How to Use OneNote to OCR Image?

OneNote can be used with picture files in addition to scanned PDFs. You should be aware, nevertheless, that the performance here may be affected by the size and quality of the photographs. A thorough tutorial on how to utilize the OneNote OCR feature on your devices can be found below.

1. Open the image in OneNote.

After opening the notebook in the OneNote application, click "Insert" > "Pictures" > "From File" to get the browse window. Here, you need to locate the image with text in it and click "Open." The image will be instantly opened in the OneNote application.

2. Right-click on the image and select the copy text option.

You now need to right-click on the image, and this time, there will be only one option: "Copy text from the picture." Click this option, and all the text in this image will be copied to your device's clipboard.

3. Paste text from the image.

Again, click anywhere in the notebook and press "Ctrl + V" to paste the copied text. If you want to paste that text into another application or file, you can use the same command in that application, too.

Part 4. How to OCR PDF with OneNote Alternative – UPDF

While OneNote brings you the OCR feature, it is basically a note-taking application and not built for OCR purposes. So, the user experience is not that great here. Furthermore, it brings multiple problems during OCR conversion, like the scanned PDF file not being opened as a scanned PDF, content formatting issues when copying text, content integrity issues after pasting the text, and more.

UPDF brings the perfect solution to all these problems. It easily opens all types of PDF documents in its native PDF viewer. The OCR processing is up to 99% accurate and does not impact the content for formatting. On top of everything, it supports multiple languages with the same accuracy. We once tried having it recognize an OCR document containing three languages, and it handled it perfectly.

UPDF brings many other features as compared to OneNote OCR features, and we have conducted a thorough comparison in the table below. If UPDF is found to offer better features in this comparison, you can download it on your PC or mobile and try the tool yourself.

Items	UPDF	OneNote
OCR Scanned PDFs
OCR Images
Convert Scanned Documents into Editable Formats
Languages Supported	38+	21
Customize OCR Settings
Edit OCRED PDF and Images
Translate Scanned Documents
Use AI to OCR Extract Text

With this table, UPDF offers a better experience considering only its OCR capabilities. If we take into consideration the other PDF features that UPDF brings, OneNote will be of no competition to it. In fact, the process of performing OCR with UPDF is much simpler and quicker with the steps discussed below. We will show you how to perform OCR on both mobile and computer:

Perform OCR on Desktop

Step 1: First, you will need to download the UPDF software. To do this, click the "Free Download" button.

Step 2: Once installed, navigate to the Tools option at the top left side of your screen. Now, from the Tools menu, choose the OCR option to start the process.  If you are the first time to use UPDF OCR, it will pop up a window to install the OCR.

Step 3: UPDF OCR provide you with 3 different options of Document Type, which include Editable PDF, Text and Picture Only, and Searchable PDF Only. 

• Editable PDF: This mode preserves the background images and illustrations from the original document and places the
  recognized text on top. As a result, the file size is usually larger than those created with the "Text and Pictures Only" mode. Visually, the output may look slightly different from the original.
• Text and pictures only: This mode saves the recognized text and images, resulting in a smaller PDF file. However, the
  appearance may differ slightly from the original document.
• Searchable PDF Only: In this mode, the page image is preserved, and the recognized text is added in an invisible layer
  beneath it. This keeps the document visually almost identical to the original.

Choose your desired mode based on your need. To achieve more accurate OCR results, you need to correctly select the language you want to recognize, such as English. If your document contains multiple languages, you need to select those languages in the language options as well.

When you finished setting, you can click on the Convert button to convert your scanned PDF into editable now.

OCR feature of UPDF also allows you to make PDF clearer effectively. Get UPDF now and start OCR your PDF by following the above steps.

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Perform Batch OCR on Desktop

There’s also Batch OCR tool in UPDF, you can transform multiple scanned PDFs into searchable or editable documents to get the work done more quickly.

Simply go to "Tools" in UPDF interface and choose "OCR", add all the files you want to convert to searchable PDF formats, choose the right document language and click "Apply".

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Perform OCR on Mobile

Step 1. Launch UPDF and Open the File

• Open the UPDF app on your phone (Android/iOS). You can download UPDF Mobile from App Store and Google Play. Click the "+" icon from the bottom right corner and tap "Files" to open the scanned PDF.

From the pop-up window, click the OCR button at the bottom of the page.

Step 2. Under "OCR Recognition Type", choose one of the following options:

Step 3. Click "Select PDF Language" and choose the document language. Select multiple languages if the document contains text in more than one language.

Step 4. Configure the "Export to" location to specify where you want to save the OCRed PDF and hit the "Done" button to begin OCR.

Step 5. Wait for the OCR to finish. Once the OCR is completed, go to the "Files" tab and open the newly-generated OCRed PDF. Copy the text or use UPDF's edit feature to edit text and images.

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Perform OCR During File Format Conversion

Even more conveniently, you can enjoy seamlessly OCR while converting formats, e.g., Word, PPT, Excel, JPG, and so on — all in one step. With its ​built-in OCR (Optical Character Recognition)​​ technology, UPDF intelligently recognizes text from scans while converting them to your desired format, eliminating the need for separate OCR preprocessing.

Key Benefits:​​

• One-Click Conversion​ – No more manual OCR steps; convert and extract text simultaneously for faster results.
• Preserve Original Layout​ – Maintain formatting, tables, and images during conversion for professional-looking documents.
• Multi-Device Support​ – UPDF lets you run OCR during file conversion, whether you’re using a phone or a computer.
• Batch Processing​ – Save time by converting ​multiple scanned files at once​ without losing quality.

Here's the steps:

• For single scanned documents:

Step 1: Drag and drop your your scanned documents to upload after launching UPDF.

Step 2: After opening your documents in UPDF, go to Tools > PDF Converter section to choose the format you want to convert (e.g. Word)

Step 3. From the pop-up window, check if have selected the right output format. You can set page range and content style if you choose Word as your output format. Toggle ​​"OCR Text Recognition"​​ to ​on and correctly select the documents' language type. Click the purple ​​"Apply"​​ button (bottom-right) to start conversion.

Step 4: Select a location to save these converted and OCR-processed files. Now let's preview the results: after OCR processing in UPDF, the converted PDF to Word maintains nearly identical formatting and layout to the original document, while allowing full text editing capabilities.

• For multiple scanned documents:

Step 1: Click the ​​"Tools"​​ button after launching UPDF, from the pop-up menu, select "Convert" under the MULTI-FILE OPERATION panel.

Step 2: Drag and drop your your scanned documents to upload. In the ​​"Convert To"​​ dropdown, select the output format that you want to convert (e.g. Word). Toggle ​​"OCR Text Recognition"​​ to ​on, and correctly select the documents' language type. Click the purple ​​"Apply"​​ button (bottom-right) to start batch conversion.

For mobile users, after opening a file in UPDF Mobile, tap Convert​ in the bottom menu bar → select the format you need, such as Word. In the pop‑up menu, you can toggle OCR Recognition on. It’s that simple!

To learn more about how to OCR a PDF, watch the below video guide.

Part 5. FAQS About OneNote OCR

Final Thoughts

The OneNote OCR feature now allows you to extract text from images, handwritten notes and even scanned PDF documents. While it may get the job done, it is not the best in class if we consider the OCR feature. So, you must go for a better OCR tool, and UPDF is a strong contender here. With high accuracy, UPDF AI, and wide language support, UPDF can make your life much easier if you download it and use the OCR features along with its other PDF editing features.