How to Use Mr. Transcription for PDFs: AI OCR to Text

I can't copy text from a PDF file

Have you ever run into that kind of trouble when working with PDF files?

Mr. Transcription is a web app that can automatically transcribe a PDF just by uploading the file.

With the latest AI, you can run free OCR (text recognition) on the contents of a PDF file.

In this article, we explain how to extract text from a PDF with Mr. Transcription, with images.

When you want to turn a PDF into text with text recognition, why not follow this article and try "Mr. Transcription" for free?

"Mr. Transcription" is an AI app that makes OCR of PDFs easy [Free]

Use the PDF transcription (OCR) tool for free: Mr. Transcription is a web app that transcribes audio, video, images, and PDFs with AI.

It is easy to use.

All you need to do is upload your PDF file from your browser.

No dedicated software needs to be installed, and you can use it from any environment: Windows, Mac, iPhone (iOS), or an Android smartphone.

If you register an account, you can transcribe up to 10 pages of PDF files per day for free, so when you want to turn a PDF into text with text recognition, why not start by trying "Mr. Transcription"?

How to transcribe a PDF with "Mr. Transcription"

Transcribing a PDF with Mr. Transcription is very easy.

The transcription is complete in 3 steps.

Step 1: Select the PDF file

First, open the Mr. Transcription top page.

After selecting a file, check the "Language" setting.

Choose the language that matches the language of your PDF file (normally, the language your browser uses is selected automatically).

Drag and drop the PDF file you want to transcribe, or click the "Select file" button to choose it.

Select the PDF file, check the preview, and then press the "Upload" button to start uploading and transcription.

Step 2: Check the transcription result

The transcription finishes quickly, and the result is shown on the screen.

You can edit the resulting text on the spot or download it as a text file.

Click Show details to open the details page.

There you can check the PDF file you uploaded, and use the latest AI to summarize, create meeting minutes, and analyze the content (For more on the summary, minutes, and content analysis features, see here).

(The sample for PDF transcription uses the "2025 White Paper on Information and Communications (Reiwa 7 edition)" (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications).)

That completes the process of recognizing the text of a PDF and extracting it with Mr. Transcription.

If you are looking for a way to OCR a PDF, Mr. Transcription is a good choice too!

It is free to use, so why not conveniently transcribe your PDF files with "Mr. Transcription" yourself?

Tips for transcribing PDF files

Here are some tips for transcribing PDF files with Mr. Transcription.

The file size limit varies by plan

The size limit for a PDF file you can upload is 20MB for unregistered users, 50MB for free members, and for paid plans, 300MB (Basic), 500MB (Value), or 1GB (Premium).

PDFs larger than this cannot be uploaded.

If you want to run text recognition on a large PDF file, split the PDF, or extract only the pages you need and save them as a separate file, and you will be able to transcribe it.

Files and file sizes supported by Mr. Transcription, and how to convert unsupported files into supported ones

We explain which files Mr. Transcription supports and what to do when your file is not supported.

How is the number of transcribed pages counted?

For PDF file transcription in Mr. Transcription, 1 page is counted as 1 image.

For example,

• A 3-page PDF file = 3 images
• A 10-page PDF file = 10 images

is how it is calculated.

The number of pages you can transcribe is capped by the image transcription limit.

If you register as a free member, you can convert up to 10 pages of PDF files into text per day.

This article explains in detail how many pages you can transcribe for free and what else you can do for free.

Please take a look.

Mr. Transcription FAQ | Frequently asked questions about pricing, the free allowance, and security | AI transcription service - Mr. Transcription

Frequently asked questions about the AI transcription site "Mr. Transcription". Pricing plans, free allowance limits, security measures, how to cancel, and more, in Q&A format. Check your questions before you start using it.

For vertically written PDFs, we recommend converting them to images before processing

With PDFs written vertically (books, magazines, newspapers, and so on), the order of the text and the column layout may not be transcribed well.

If you want to transcribe vertical text cleanly, we recommend converting the PDF to images first and then using the vertical-writing OCR feature of Mr. Transcription.

This article explains the vertical-writing OCR feature of Mr. Transcription.

New vertical text transcription feature! OCR for newspapers, magazines, and books is now even more convenient!

A new feature for highly accurate AI OCR of vertical text in newspapers, magazines, and books! Columns, headings, and captions are detected automatically. We explain how to use Mr. Transcription to transcribe for free just by taking a photo with your smartphone.

This article also explains the process of converting a vertically written PDF to images and then turning it into text.

Please take a look.

How to transcribe vertically written PDFs: turn books, magazines, and old documents into text for free

We explain how to transcribe vertically written PDFs with high accuracy. PDFs of books, magazines, newspapers, and old documents can also be turned into text for free. By adding an image conversion step, AI automatically detects columns and complex layouts. Smartphones work too.

How can I extract and transcribe only part of a PDF with many pages?

When you run OCR on a PDF file with many pages, sometimes you want to transcribe only the few pages you need.

In that case, we recommend "PDF Image Converter".

With "PDF Image Converter", we recommend splitting the PDF into images (JPG or PNG) and uploading only the images of the pages you need to Mr. Transcription.

You can smoothly turn just the parts you need into text.

This article explains PDF Image Converter in detail.

Please take a look.

[Free] How to use "PDF Image Converter" to convert PDFs to JPG and PNG | AI transcription service - Mr. Transcription

We explain how to use "PDF Image Converter", a free tool that easily converts PDFs to JPG and PNG. It runs entirely in your browser, so it is safe and needs no registration. We also introduce a use case of transcribing only the pages you need from a PDF with many pages.

Why not turn your PDFs into text easily with Mr. Transcription?

As you can see, with Mr. Transcription you can simply upload a PDF file and have the text recognized and extracted automatically.

Even PDF files in which the text information is embedded as images can be put to convenient use once converted to text, by analyzing and summarizing them with AI services.

When you want to turn a PDF file into text, why not try the highly accurate AI transcription of Mr. Transcription?