I don't have that new option in my version of Acrobat. I have version 17.12.20098.240878. How do I get the release with this new option? It's not showing up in my CC app as an update.

Who decided to make this a mandatory setting? Please give us the ability to shut off Automatic OCR because when it doesn't recognize a font, it simply inserts squares. Why did ya'll not test this feature Adobe?! That's not good!! Until you fix this, we don't need anything else enhanced, just this bug fixed. Thanks.

Here's another vote that this "feature" is OFF by default. And also clearly available in the preferences settings to disable.

Please, PLEASE turn off automatic OCR when editing a document. It's an absolute disaster, and takes away significantly from the functionality of DC PRO.

Here's another vote that this "feature" is OFF by default. And also clearly available in the preferences settings.

I agree. This is a massively important request for a fix in my opinion. I have the exact same issues with how it currently works and this is a relatively new change they have made. We used to choose Edit PDF and then choose what we would edit. The auto OCR it's doing to the whole file immediately is often damaging.

I agree it should be optional or to turn off completely during normal use and an obvious place to do it.
I work in prepress for offset printing and it took me several annoying days before I finally understood why DC was so slow, so I was glad I found the steps posted by Bilal.

What I DO like (more for my classes) is that I can now OCR a page that has a scanned image on it as well as a page number or something and if I tried to OCR in the past I'd get a notice with something like "This page has editable text" or some other infuriating warning and wouldn't OCR it making me extract the image, OCR separately and then put back in - which rarely happened, I'd save it as its own PDF.
Anyway - (a)OCR should definitely not be the default, (b)there should be a preference for what it is doing instead of hidden in the now-cumbersome UI and (c)stop changing the keyboard shortcuts.
Oh yeah, and (d)if I have the Output Preview Window open, I click on something to edit... then I shift-click to add another element so they'll open in AI like they always did but nooooo - it makes a comment box, WT*? That's dumb, I can't imagine anyone in editing mode wants to be redirected to adding a comment instead of adding to a selection.

There needs to be an easier way to do this. OCR needs to be an option, not a default.

Just put it as a button to click in the side bar after hitting edit PDF.100% of the time I do not need this. Just need to edit an image or remove holding lines a customer leaves in. So I will get files that have text converted to outlines (a good thing) but then when I hit edit PDF it goes thru page recognition and screws up my text and sometimes logos. Also it rasterizes logos to. It really messes up files. and if you don't pay attention you end up printing something that is screwed up. Really annoying and no option to disable. It should NOT be automatic. It SHOULD be an option to click on ONLY if you want it.

How do i move my completed and hand signed documents to emails and add images? Please help i'm reaching deadline ....

turn auto OCR OFF.

IT is NOT NEEDED BY DEFAULT.

AUTOMATIC ocr IS MUCH LIKE TYPING IN ALL CAPS.

It wastes hours of peoples lives.

Hi,
Apologies for the issue that you are facing.

Could you try the following steps:
1. Open any scanned pdf.
2. Go to Edit PDF.
3. Wait for OCR to complete.
4. On the right hand pane, click on "Revert to Image" option.

This will turn off the auto-OCR feature. Now, Acrobat will not run OCR automatically.

Let us know if this helps.
For more information about this, visit https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/edit-scanned-pdfs.html

Yes! Agree! Simplify it! That's feature sucks! It's trying to OCR every page in 340 page file. It takes forever! Hate Acrobat DC more and more every day. :-)

Please turn off automatic OCR. It's like working with a Microsoft product.

Bilal Ansari - Thank you. It worked.

Can this procedure be included for the customer service people reference as I did a 1 hr chat and 5 min call with customer service and both of them where not able to resolve issue and both of them did not want to bump me up to a higher level of help just telling me it couldn't be resolved. The call in to customer service was very unhelpful and didn't even want to provide this uservoice forum link to me.

You have restored hope in me to keep subscription.

Hi,
Apologies for the issue that you are facing.
It appears that the issue you are facing is that Acrobat is 'Converting scanned image to Editable Text', although you are trying to add header/footer only.
Could you try the following steps:
1. Open any scanned pdf.
2. Go to Edit PDF.
3. Wait for OCR to complete.
4. On the right hand pane, click on "Revert to Image" option.

This will turn off the auto-OCR feature. Now, Acrobat will not run OCR automatically.

Let us know if this helps.
For more information about this, visit https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/edit-scanned-pdfs.html

I've used Acrobat version 7,8,9, X, and now DC. Older versions then DC, I had no problems adding a header/footer. In DC they changed the layout and commands in that you have to go thru the Edit command to add header/footer. In doing so the Edit commands wants to interpret the pdf file and convert words to non-word/symbols thereby rendering me added a header/footer as pdf document become unreadable.
I've tried chat support and phone support with the same reply, that it is not fixable. One of the main reasons we purchased use of Acrobat is to scan in existing hardcopies and add via Acrobat header/footers to the scanned document.
It is very frustrating and now am thinking about ending Acrobat subscription. Hope a fix is done.

You need not wait for hours. Just open any 1-page pdf and follow the steps 1-4 I mentioned before.
It will hardly take a minute. Now you can open any file of any size and it won't run OCR again.

nice over ten hours with of scanning OCR. After saving i've noticed that i've forgot to gut on every site 2cm. Again over 10 hours with Auto OCR bye Weekend
by Adobe Acrobat Pro DC

SERIOUS a document with >100 pages Needs hours
nice that i don't Need to wait hours again

"4. Click on this link. It will undo OCR. And now this preference remains sticky. You need not to do these steps again and again. You can also change this preference again whenever you want, by clicking the new link available there "Convert to text"."

i want to disable it before i go to holiday