---
title: "Scanned to searchable PDF JavaScript library | Nutrient SDK"
canonical_url: "https://www.nutrient.io/guides/web/conversion/scan-to-searchable-pdf/"
md_url: "https://www.nutrient.io/guides/web/conversion/scan-to-searchable-pdf.md"
last_updated: "2026-06-09T10:37:30.506Z"
description: "Convert scanned PDFs to searchable text with OCR in Nutrient Web SDK, choose languages, and unlock copy/paste and search."
---

# Convert scanned PDFs to searchable PDFs using JavaScript

You can convert scanned documents to searchable PDFs with Nutrient Web SDK.

Converting scanned documents to a searchable PDF is available when using [Web SDK](https://www.nutrient.io/guides/web.md) with [Document Engine](https://www.nutrient.io/guides/document-engine.md). For more information, refer to the [operational mode](https://www.nutrient.io/guides/web/about/operational-modes.md) guide.








To perform the conversion, first [open the document from Document Engine](https://www.nutrient.io/guides/web/open-a-document/from-document-engine.md), and then apply the `performOcr` document operation:

```js

await instance.applyOperations([
  { type: "performOcr", language: "english", pageIndexes: "all" }
]);

```

This will detect all English text in the document and make it searchable.

This feature requires the OCR component to be enabled in your license.

## Other languages

If your scanned document is written in a language other than English, you can make it searchable by modifying the `language` parameter. For example, to convert the document to Spanish, run:

```js

await instance.applyOperations([
  { type: "performOcr", language: "spanish", pageIndexes: "all" }
]);

```

Nutrient Web SDK supports the following languages:

- Croatian

- Czech

- Danish

- Dutch

- English

- Finnish

- French

- German

- Indonesian

- Italian

- Malay

- Norwegian

- Polish

- Portuguese

- Serbian

- Slovak

- Slovenian

- Spanish

- Swedish

- Turkish

- Welsh
---

## Related pages

- [Headless file conversion](/guides/web/conversion/headless.md)
- [Convert images to text using JavaScript](/guides/web/conversion/image-to-text.md)
- [Convert images to PDFs using JavaScript](/guides/web/conversion/image-to-pdf.md)
- [JavaScript PDF conversion library](/guides/web/conversion.md)
- [Convert PDFs to images using JavaScript](/guides/web/conversion/pdf-to-image.md)
- [Convert Office to PDF using JavaScript](/guides/web/conversion/office-to-pdf.md)
- [Convert PDF to Office using JavaScript](/guides/web/conversion/pdf-to-office.md)
- [Convert text to PDF using JavaScript](/guides/web/conversion/text-to-pdf.md)
- [Convert PDFs and images to PDF/A using JavaScript](/guides/web/conversion/to-pdfa.md)