How to make a scanned Hindi PDF searchable
Open Make searchable, choose Hindi as the language of the scan, add English if the document is in both, and press Make it searchable. The Devanagari words go into the PDF itself, so you can search, select and copy them like typed text.
Make searchableFree. Nothing is uploaded.
How to do it
- Open Make searchable and add the scanned PDF.
- Choose Hindi under Language of the scan.
- Choose English under Also in if the pages carry English as well.
- Press Make it searchable, and wait while each page is read on your device.
- Save the copy and search it for a word or number you can see.
Hindi and English on one page
Government circulars, notices, orders and many forms are printed in Hindi and English together, side by side or one after the other. Pick Hindi first and English second, and both go into the searchable layer, each in its own script, lined up with the page. A form with Hindi headings and answers filled in English letters works the same way.
Hindi and Marathi share the Devanagari script but have separate readers in the list. For a Marathi document, pick Marathi, which knows Marathi words and spellings, even though the letters look the same.
Old Hindi PDFs that copy out as nonsense
Many Hindi documents were typed in older fonts such as Kruti Dev and Chanakya, which store each Hindi letter under an English key. They look right on the page, but copying from them gives strings of English letters and symbols, and a search for a Hindi word finds nothing. Because such pages already have text, Make searchable leaves them alone and says every page already has text.
The way round is to turn the pages into pictures first, which drops the broken text. Save the pages with PDF to images as PNG at Print sharpness, make them a PDF again with Images to PDF on A4 with no margin, and make that searchable with Hindi chosen. The new layer holds real Hindi, which searches and copies correctly.
Numbers, dates and names
Hindi documents print numbers in two ways: the usual 0 to 9, or Devanagari digits such as १२३. What is read is stored as it is printed, so search for a number the way the page shows it. Dates, file numbers and amounts are where a misread matters most, so check them against the page before you quote them.
Names deserve the same care. Hindi joins letters into one shape, and half-letters and the line along the top are the first things a poor scan blurs. Search for a name you know is there; if it is not found, try part of it.
Once it is searchable
The words can now be found and copied like a typed PDF. Remove areas can find an Aadhaar or phone number in it with Find and remove, which it cannot do on a bare picture; check every mark, as the numbers were read from a scan. Where your browser has a built-in translator, Summarise and translate can turn it into English on your device.
For an editable Word file in Hindi, take the searchable copy to PDF to Word and choose Editable words under Scanned pages: the Hindi read here is used, rather than the page being read again in English. Check the layout and the words before you rely on it.
A worked example
Ramesh has a 20-page scanned court order, in Hindi with a few English lines, and needs every place it mentions his plot number and a hearing date. He opens Make searchable, adds the PDF, chooses Hindi as the language of the scan and English under Also in, and presses Make it searchable. The Hindi reader, about 1.4 MB, comes from this site the first time; the reading itself happens on his computer, page by page. He saves the copy, searches for the plot number, then for the date as it is printed, and reads each match on the page itself before quoting it.
Questions people ask
Is the document uploaded to be read?
No. Only the Hindi reader comes from this site, the first time you pick it. The scan is read in your browser and never leaves your device.
Does it read handwritten Hindi?
Poorly. It is made for printed text, so handwritten entries on a form are mostly missed or misread. Check those by eye.
Will the pages look different?
No. The words go in as an invisible layer; the scan you see is untouched.
Which other Indian languages can it read?
Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi and Urdu, each fetched the first time it is picked. See also Malayalam OCR.
How do I search in Hindi on my phone?
Switch your keyboard to Hindi in the reader’s search box and type the word, or search for a number or an English word on the same page.
Your file stays on your device. Foolscap does the work inside your browser, so nothing is uploaded and there is nothing for anyone to keep. How you can check