---
title: "Search Scanned Documents (OCR)"
url: https://lookeen.com/use-cases/ocr-scanned-documents
lang: en
description: "Make scans, faxes, photos and image PDFs searchable with text recognition – without changing the originals, and with local OCR inside your own network if you like."
published: 2026-10-12T10:00:00+00:00
modified: 2026-10-12T10:00:00+00:00
---

# Search Scanned Documents

Contracts, receipts, faxes and screenshots often contain no searchable text – to a normal search, they're invisible. Lookeen's OCR recognizes the text and makes these documents as findable as any other file.

[Try it free](https://lookeen.com/get-started) [Talk to us](https://lookeen.com/contact)

## How it works

Lookeen reads text from scans and images and makes it searchable.

### Text from images and PDFs

Lookeen recognizes text in scanned PDFs, TIFFs, images and screenshots and stores it in the search index – in file shares, mailboxes and PST archives.

### Originals stay untouched

OCR never changes a file. The recognized text is kept separately in the index, and the original stays as it is.

### Many languages

English and German are included; more languages can be added as needed.

### Search as usual

Hits from recognized text appear in the same results – with filters, tags and preview.

## Local or cloud – your choice

You decide for each source where text recognition runs.

-   **Local text recognition:** Lookeen Server can run OCR locally with Tesseract. Your documents never leave the network.
-   **Cloud provider optional:** Alternatively, a cloud service can be connected with your own credentials – only if an administrator explicitly configures it.
-   **Recognize once, use often:** An OCR cache prevents the same files from being processed again on every run.
-   **Switchable per source:** OCR can be enabled separately for files, PST archives and Microsoft 365.

Learn more: [File servers & network drives](https://lookeen.com/use-cases/file-server-search) · [Tax advisors](https://lookeen.com/industries/tax-advisors) · [Healthcare](https://lookeen.com/industries/healthcare)

[All use cases →](https://lookeen.com/use-cases)