Word 2016 - Switch off OCR in PDF files.

Question

_{Tuesday, June 14, 2016 8:05 AM}

Is there any way to switch off the OCR functionality on PDF documents so that this behaves like Word 2010?

We commonly in our organisation used Word to remove pages from large PDF documents of which the OCR causes issues as this is often inaccurate and breaks any complex formatting.

I have searched through the settings, and also the forum but have came up a tad empty handed.

All replies (6)

_{Wednesday, June 15, 2016 12:33 PM ✅Answered}

Hi,

What's your detailed Office version, click-to-run for Office 365 or MSI version? Please click File > Office Account, check the product information.

If you are using Office MSI version, we can try the following steps to disable OCR for Office applications:

Go to control Panel > Programs and Features, select Office application, click Change > Add or Remove Features, click Continue, expand Office Tools, click Optical Character Recognition, set it to Not Available. Finish the changes to have a try.

Regards,

Winnie Liang
TechNet Community Support

Please mark the reply as an answer if you find it is helpful.

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_{Tuesday, October 11, 2016 10:59 AM}

Hi,

What with non MSI version (Unatandent instalation from Office Click To Run)? Is it possible to disable Optical Character Recognition? 

_{Thursday, February 2, 2017 9:47 PM | 7 votes}

HI,

I found a workaround

Open folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16

And move MSOCRRES.ORP from this folder to some your temporary folder.

Then you can open pdf without OCR.

_{Saturday, September 15, 2018 6:12 AM}

Hello, seemebreakthis here.

I am so delightfully surprised to find a working solution for this !   Thank you so much.  Now my Microsoft Word 2016 can import pdf as-is.  The OCR function really doesn't work that well, it messes up formatting all the time.  To have the option of not enabling OCR while importing PDF is very useful.

Thank you !

_{Tuesday, January 29, 2019 2:49 AM}

That won't work anymore. 

_{Tuesday, April 14, 2020 7:27 PM}

Thank you
Your solution worked for me!
(Office 365)