PDF / OCR / STUDY NOTES
Stop retyping your textbooks: turn scanned PDFs into study notes
Build an editable revision draft from a scanned textbook or research paper, then add your own summaries and questions.
1. Start with a chapter, not the whole book
Keep the original PDF and work on a copy. The converter accepts up to 25 MB and 200 pages, while the daily free OCR allowance is 30 pages. For a long book, use PDF Split & Merge to extract a chapter with ranges such as 1-10. Splitting selects pages; it does not compress the PDF, and its output can still exceed the converter’s size limit.
2. Choose the document language
Open PDF to Markdown and enable OCR for pages without selectable text. In the free workflow, choose the language yourself and select Fast recognition. Use Simplified Chinese for a simplified Chinese book, Traditional Chinese for traditional text, or a suitable mixed-language option. Automatic and high-accuracy recognition are planned paid features and are currently unavailable.
3. Convert and check against the original
Drop the chapter into the tool and convert. Processing runs locally. Use Source and Preview to review headings, paragraph order, names, dates and citations. OCR can confuse similar characters, particularly in faint scans or complex layouts. Higher confidence is not proof of accuracy. Edit the source before relying on the note.
4. Turn the draft into a revision system
Add your own section headings, a short summary, key terms and questions. Keep the PDF page number next to each quotation so you can verify it later. Distinguish the author’s words from your own comments. For example, use headings such as “Core idea”, “Evidence” and “Questions to revisit”. This is an editing workflow; the tool does not automatically write summaries.
5. Take the note into your workspace
Download .md and copy it into your Obsidian vault, avoiding existing filenames. For Notion, use its Text & Markdown importer. Review formatting after import. If you want a printable revision sheet, open Markdown to HTML / Print PDF, paste the edited Markdown, generate the preview and use the browser’s PDF print destination.
What to check before calling it finished
Images and table layouts are not preserved, and mathematical formulas are not converted into reliable LaTeX. Rebuild important tables or formulas manually and keep a reference to the original page. Free tools share 10 successful operations per browser per day; one PDF split and one conversion use two operations. Failed conversions do not count. OCR pages share the separate 30-page daily allowance.