Adobe Acrobat PDF Fixer

January 01, 2022

Do you have a professor who provides PDFs that look like they’ve been run through a meat grinder? Are you a professor who provides PDFs that contain multiple scanned pages on a single page?

A screenshot of a PDF file that has been opened in Adobe Acrobat DC. There are two pages scanned from a book with lots of text

We’ve all been there – someone has generously provided us with a PDF copy of a book chapter or article. But there’s one problem – none of the text is actually searchable. And each page of the PDF actually contains two pages of scanned text.

PDFs in this format are not accessible to people using screen readers, and keeping multiple scanned pages on each PDF page can make navigating the document inconvenient and cumbersome. Adobe Acrobat can make those PDFs more usable, but manually fixing your scans each time is tedious.

This Acrobat Action will semi-automatically process a scanned PDF to separate each scanned page onto its own PDF page and run the entire document through OCR to create searchable and selectable text.

A screenshot of a PDF file that has been opened in Adobe Acrobat DC. There is a single page of scanned text with several lines selected

Requirements

Adobe Acrobat DC

FYI – if you’re a student, check if your school provides a license for Acrobat that you can use. If not, you can also try running this on a school library computer.

A PDF file with "two-up" pages -- where each page of the PDF contains two actual pages. Be sure that all pages are rotated in the same direction.

Installation

Download the Action file here: Fix Scanned Book Pages.sequ
Open Acrobat DC
Open the "Action Wizard" from "More Tools" and select "Manage Actions"
Click "Import" and select the downloaded file.

tl;dr instructions

Open a PDF file
Run “Fix Scanned Book Pages” from the Action Wizard
Use the measurement tool to determine how much to crop each page by. This will typically be around 5.5” on each side, but because the crop runs automatically, it is best to check this beforehand.
Press ESC to clear the measurement and click “Proceed” to continue
First the ODD pages will be cropped by the amount you enter in the RIGHT field
Next the EVEN pages will be cropped by the amount you enter in the LEFT field
Once OCR finishes, the PDF file will be saved

Detailed Instructions

Step One: Open a PDF file in Acrobat. Make sure that all of the pages are rotated correctly and facing the same direction.

A screenshot of a PDF file that has been opened in Adobe Acrobat DC. There are two pages scanned from a book with lots of text. There is a blue rectangular selection over the pages, but no text has been selected

This Action works on PDF files where each page actually contains two pages side-by-side, such as what you get when scanning a book. The Action will split the pages into separate pages as well as run OCR so that the actual text will be searchable and selectable.

Step Two: Open the Action Wizard

You can get to the Action Wizard by clicking on the "More Tools" icon in the tool bar and then selecting "Action Wizard"

A screenshot of Adobe Acrobat DC's Tools Menu. The Action Wizard has been circled in red — For whatever reason, Adobe hides this feature and keeps it tucked away out of sight. If you find yourself working with a lot of PDFs like this, consider adding it to your quick-access tools.

OPTIONAL: Click “add” from “More Tools” to put an icon for the Action Wizard in your toolbar

Step Three: (If you have not yet installed the Action) Click on "Manage Actions"

Click the "Import" button and select the file you downloaded earlier.

A screenshot the Adobe Acrobat Manage Actions panel

Step Four: Click "Fix Scanned Book Pages" in the Actions menu

A screenshot of a PDF file that has been opened in Adobe Acrobat DC. There are two pages scanned from a book with lots of text. The Actions Wizard is open and the first item in the Actions List is circled

Verify the correct file is selected (if you have multiple files open in Acrobat) and click “Start”

A screenshot of a PDF file that has been opened in Adobe Acrobat DC. There are two pages scanned from a book with lots of text. The Action Wizard is open and there is a blue Start button

Step Five: First, all of the pages will be duplicated automatically.

Step Six: Figure out how much you need to crop each page by. The action will pause while giving you a chance to use the measure tool. Measure the distance from the right and left edges to the center of the scan. Keep in mind that this distance may be slightly different for each side.

A screenshot of a PDF file that has been opened in Adobe Acrobat DC. There are two pages scanned from a book with lots of text. The Measure tool is active.

Once you've determined the crop measurements, click "Proceed" to continue.

Step Seven: Enter how much to crop each of the ODD pages. This should be the measurement from the RIGHT edge to the center. Enter this measurement in the RIGHT field.

A screenshot of a PDF file that has been opened in Adobe Acrobat DC. There are two pages scanned from a book with lots of text. The crop pages panel is open.

If needed, the Action panel on the right will display a reminder of which measurements to enter where.

Step Eight: Enter how much to crop each of the EVEN pages. This should be the measurement from the RIGHT edge to the center. Enter this measurement in the LEFT field.

If needed, the Action panel on the right will display a reminder of which measurements to enter where.

Step Nine: OCR and Saving

Once the crops have been applied, the Action will then run Acrobat's optical character recognition (OCR) on the document and save any recognized text. This make take a few minutes depending on the length of your document. Once OCR is completed, the processed PDF file will be saved.