Zotero pdf reader won't highlight some pages

I've seen this problem addressed in previous threads, but none provide a solution. (See: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/95815/pdf-reader-cant-highlight-passage-but-can-search-for-words-in-it)

I have several pdfs I created by scanning books then running the Adobe Acrobat Pro OCR. In the Zotero pdf reader, some pages of those files work fine but others, apparently randomly, won't let me highlight text. I can search for words in those pages so I know the OCR worked, but no highlighting.

In Acrobat I CAN highlight those pages, but if I open them in Zotero and try to create notes from those highlights, they appear as locked items with the message "No extracted text." It's like it can't see the text on those random pages.

Here's a sample of a pdf that's behaving this way: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DKlXRqtWuJBSiqn-wREfvOSb-XJcnBUt/view?usp=share_link.

Any thoughts on what I can do to files like this to make them fully highlightable in Zotero? Thanks!
  • There are some issues with how the pdf reader in Zotero treats some OCR pdf's. For most of the articles I download from JSTOR, Zotero highlights run off the edge of the page. The text often copies correctly, but the highlights are a mess. If I run these through ABBYY 15's OCR it generally fixes the problem, though, not always. For scanning books, I get much better and consistent results in Zotero with ABBYY rather than Adobe.
  • Just tested out ABBYY, and you're right, it works a lot better for scanned books. Not having this problem any more. Thanks for the tip!
  • On the desktop, abbyy finereader15 can solve most of these problems. The main reason is that the text box is not set properly in the recognition software, but the problem is still serious on the ipad. However, the same pdf has no problem in other pdf readers on ipad such as pdf expert,marginnote3, so there should be room for improvement
  • I started using ABBYY today, and it seems to have fixed the problem. Thanks for the info!
  • ABBY also fixed this problem for me.
Sign In or Register to comment.