Online OCR: Accurate Text Recognition in 14+ Languages

Need to extract text from a scanned document, image, or PDF without retyping a single word? ForgeFile's online OCR (Optical Character Recognition) converts images (JPG, PNG, TIFF, BMP), scanned PDFs, receipts, forms, and books into accurate, fully editable text. Our AI-powered engine handles printed text, handwriting, tables, and complex multi-column layouts with high precision.

No software, no manual retyping: upload your file, select recognition options and output format, and download extracted, editable text. Multi-page documents are processed sequentially in a single job without manual splitting.

Supported Input Formats for OCR

• Images - JPG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, WebP: Extract text from photos, screenshots, scanned pages, whiteboards, and camera images.
• Scanned PDFs: Recognize and digitize printed contracts, forms, books, invoices, and letters - even in poor scan quality.
• Handwritten documents: Convert handwritten notes, forms, and cursive text into editable digital content.
• Tables & structured data: Extract tabular content from forms, financial documents, and datasets into editable spreadsheet format.

Output Formats

• Plain text (TXT) - Raw extracted text, ready to copy, paste, or run through translation or summarization.
• Word document (DOCX) - Formatted editable document that preserves paragraph structure.
• Searchable PDF - Original scanned PDF with a hidden text layer added, making it fully searchable and copy-pasteable.
• Excel / CSV - For extracted tables and structured data.

Who Uses Online OCR?

• Legal & Compliance Teams - Digitize signed contracts, court documents, and legal briefs for search, editing, and archiving.
• Students & Researchers - Extract text from textbook scans, journal articles, and handwritten notes for editing or translation.
• Businesses & Finance Teams - Process invoices, receipts, expense forms, and financial statements into structured data automatically.
• Content Creators & Publishers - Convert printed material, screenshots, and physical manuscripts into editable digital text.
• Medical & Healthcare Professionals - Digitize patient records, lab reports, and printed forms securely.

Why Choose ForgeFile for OCR?

• Handwriting recognition - Handles both cursive and block handwriting across supported languages.
• 14+ languages - Including right-to-left scripts like Arabic and Hebrew, and CJK characters (Chinese, Japanese, Korean).
• Table & layout preservation - Detects columns, tables, and reading order for clean, structured output.
• Multi-page batch processing - Full PDFs processed in one go; multiple files processed simultaneously.
• Privacy & security - Files encrypted in transit and at rest.
• Free to start - Free OCR for small files - no credit card needed. Upgrade for larger documents and batch jobs.

How It Works - 4 Simple Steps

1. Upload your image, scanned PDF, or multi-page document.
2. Select language, output format (TXT, DOCX, searchable PDF), and any special options (table extraction, handwriting mode).
3. OCR engine processes the file - correcting skew, enhancing contrast, and recognizing text with precision.
4. Download your editable text, formatted document, or searchable PDF.

To see how OCR engines recognize printed and handwritten text, see the open-source Tesseract OCR documentation.

ForgeFile makes document digitization fast, accurate, and completely secure for legal teams, researchers, businesses, and students - without a single line of retyping.