Fix Acrobat Pro 2019 Enhance Scans OCR Error and Crashes
Question details
User experiences errors or crashes in Acrobat Pro 2019 when using the Enhance Scans or Recognize Text features on poor-quality scanned PDFs.
- Product
- Adobe Acrobat Pro 2019
- Device & OS
- Windows
- Scenario
- Attempting to perform Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on poor-quality scanned PDF documents.
- Observed behavior
- The application crashes or displays an error message instead of successfully completing the text recognition process.
Verify that your Windows operating system and Adobe Acrobat Pro 2019 are updated to their latest versions, and create a backup copy of your original scanned PDF document before troubleshooting.
Use the Scanned Document Enhancement Workflow
Bypassing the standard text recognition workflow and processing the document in smaller batches can prevent Acrobat from crashing on poor-quality scans.
Acrobat's standard 'Recognize Text in Multiple Files' feature can be resource-intensive. When dealing with poor-quality scans, the OCR engine may get overwhelmed, leading to application crashes. Switching to the targeted 'Scanned Document' enhancement tool and limiting the number of pages processed simultaneously reduces the memory load.
Open your problematic PDF in Acrobat Pro 2019, navigate to the Tools pane, and select the 'Enhance Scans' option.
In the toolbar that appears, click on 'Enhance' and choose 'Scanned Document' from the drop-down menu instead of the failing workflow.
If the document is large, specify a smaller page range (e.g., 1-5 pages at a time) in the enhancement settings to prevent the software from overloading.
Recreate the Scan at a Higher Quality
Improving the source image quality is often the most effective way to resolve persistent OCR failures.
Extract Text from Scanned PDFs Reliably with WPS Office
If Acrobat continues to crash on challenging documents, use WPS Office's built-in PDF tool. It features a lightweight, highly accurate OCR engine that easily recognizes and extracts text from scanned documents without freezing.
- 1. Open the PDF in WPS: Launch WPS Office and open your scanned PDF document.
- 2. Access the OCR Tool: Navigate to the 'Tools' tab on the top ribbon and click the 'OCR' button.
- 3. Select Output Format: Choose whether you want to extract the text to a document or convert the entire PDF to an editable Word file.
- 4. Start Recognition: Click 'Confirm' to let the WPS OCR engine process the document quickly and reliably.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does poor scan quality cause OCR software to crash?
Poorly scanned documents with artifacts, smudges, or low resolution force the OCR engine to consume excessive memory and processing power as it struggles to identify shapes. This heavy resource consumption can lead to application freezes or crashes.
What is the optimal DPI for scanning documents for OCR?
For the best OCR results, it is generally recommended to scan text documents at a resolution of 300 DPI. Lower resolutions make text difficult to recognize, while excessively high resolutions create unnecessarily large files that can slow down processing.
Does running OCR increase the size of my PDF document?
Yes, performing OCR on a scanned document adds a hidden, searchable text layer behind the original images. Depending on the software's settings and how aggressively it tries to enhance the image quality, this can significantly increase the overall file size.
