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How to Transcribe Vertical PDFs: Books, Magazines, Old Documents
Oct. 9, 2026
I transcribed a PDF with vertical writing, but the lines came out in the wrong order and the result was useless.
No worries! Mr. Transcription can transcribe vertical text with high accuracy!
Have you ever struggled to convert a PDF with vertical writing into text?
When you run OCR on vertically written books, magazines, newspapers, or scanned old company documents, the order of the lines can get mixed up, or multi-column layouts may not be read properly.
In cases like this, we recommend the AI app "Mr. Transcription"!
With Mr. Transcription, a dedicated AI for vertical writing lets you convert even complex vertical PDFs of books, newspapers, and magazines into text with high accuracy.
The key is to first convert the PDF into images and then upload those.
In this article, we explain with images how to convert PDF files with vertical writing into text with Mr. Transcription, for free and with high accuracy.
If you want to convert vertical PDFs of books, magazines, newspapers, or old company documents into text, why not try Mr. Transcription for free by following this article?
We recommend "Mr. Transcription" for text OCR of PDF files with vertical writing!
"Mr. Transcription", a PDF transcription (OCR) tool, is a web app that uses AI to transcribe audio, video, images, and PDFs.
Its dedicated AI engine for recognizing vertical writing can recognize magazines, newspapers, self-scanned books, and old documents and convert them into text with high accuracy.
It also handles the complex layouts of newspapers and magazines, such as
- multi-column text
- headlines
- photo captions
and more!
It is easy to use: just access it from your browser and load your file.
No dedicated software needs to be installed, and it works in any environment: Windows, Mac, iPhone (iOS), and Android smartphones.
By converting your PDF into image files with "PDF Image Converter", you can run OCR on PDF files with vertical writing with high recognition accuracy.
Once you register an account, you can transcribe up to 10 images per day for free, so why not experience the vertical-writing OCR of "Mr. Transcription" for yourself?
How to transcribe vertical PDFs for free
Let's get started with the steps for converting a vertical PDF into text with high accuracy using Mr. Transcription.
The key to transcribing PDF files with vertical writing is to convert the PDF into image files and transcribe those.
Step 1: Convert the PDF into images with PDF Image Converter
First, open the "PDF Image Converter" page.
Once the page is open, choose the conversion format: JPG or PNG.
We recommend JPG if you prioritize a small file size, and PNG if you prioritize image quality.
Drag and drop your PDF file, or click the "Select PDF file" button, and choose the vertical PDF you want to transcribe.
Once you select the file, the conversion into images starts automatically.
When processing is complete, a ZIP file containing each page of the PDF as an image is downloaded.
When you extract the ZIP file, each page of the PDF is a separate image file.
PDF Image Converter completes the conversion inside your browser, so you can use it with peace of mind even for confidential vertical PDFs!
Step 2: Upload the converted images to Mr. Transcription
After converting the PDF file into images, next open the image transcription (OCR) page.
Select the language that matches the file you want to transcribe.
Click the "Select file" button, or drag and drop, and select the image files you created in Step 1.
Once you select the files, the selected images are displayed like this.
Because you can choose and upload only the images of the pages you need, you can also transcribe just the parts you need from a vertical PDF with many pages.
Step 3: Select "Vertical" and transcribe
From the "Text direction" menu below the image, select "Vertical".
The default setting is "Horizontal", so the key point is to always switch to "Vertical" when transcribing a vertical PDF.
That completes the preparation.
Click the "Upload" button to start uploading the image files.
When the upload finishes, transcription starts automatically.
With the latest AI, text recognition is completed quickly, and the transcription result appears on the screen.
As you can see, even the multi-column sections have been recognized and converted into text in the correct order.
Click "Show details" to open the details page.
On the details page, you can also summarize, create minutes, and analyze the content with the latest AI (Click here for more about the summary and analysis features).
In this way, Mr. Transcription can convert even complex vertical PDFs with multi-column layouts into text easily, accurately, and in a natural order.
Why not try converting vertical PDFs into text for free with Mr. Transcription yourself?
Use cases for transcribing PDFs with vertical text
Converting vertical PDFs into text makes them handy in many situations in work, study, and research.
Below, we introduce typical use cases for transcribing vertical PDFs with Mr. Transcription.
Digitize old vertical company documents and summarize and analyze them with AI
You may sometimes want to feed old company documents, sleeping in a company storeroom or deep in a file server, to the latest AI.
By transcribing PDFs of past proposals, reports, and company newsletters written vertically, you can bring old company documents back to life as text data.
With the summary and content analysis features of Mr. Transcription, you can summarize them on the spot or reuse them as business documents.
If you want to put past knowledge to use in today's work, we recommend transcribing the vertical PDF files.
Convert self-scanned book, magazine, and newspaper PDFs into text
If you want to convert vertical books, magazines, and newspapers that you scanned yourself into text from PDFs, we also recommend Mr. Transcription.
With Mr. Transcription, the latest AI automatically detects multi-column and complex layouts and converts them into text in a natural order.
You can quote passages from self-scanned novels and specialist books, or keep the body text of magazine articles as searchable text, preserving your past paper materials as a valuable database.
This article also explains in detail how to photograph pages for vertical-writing OCR with Mr. Transcription and useful techniques.
Please take a look.
Transcribe PDFs of historical materials such as classical Japanese and Chinese texts
Mr. Transcription is also useful when you want to convert PDF materials in vertical classical Japanese or classical Chinese into text for university papers or research.
The vertical-writing OCR of Mr. Transcription supports Chinese, Korean, and Mongolian in addition to Japanese, so it can convert unpunctuated classical Chinese texts, premodern vertical Hangul materials, and Mongolian script materials into text.
For example, if you set the language to "中文" (Chinese), you can transcribe historical materials in classical Chinese saved as PDFs as they are.
You can digitize old research materials and put them to use in your papers and research.
Transcribing vertical PDFs | Frequently asked questions
Here are some frequently asked questions about converting vertical PDFs into text with Mr. Transcription.
Q. Can I upload a PDF directly and transcribe it as vertical text?
A. Yes, Mr. Transcription also supports transcribing PDFs uploaded directly.
However, the high-accuracy AI dedicated to vertical writing is built into the image transcription feature.
For vertical PDFs with multi-column or complex layouts, converting them into images first and then uploading them gives higher accuracy.
How to transcribe a PDF directly with Mr. Transcription is explained in this article.
Q. Can I transcribe only part of a PDF with many pages?
A. Yes, you can.
After converting the vertical PDF into images with PDF Image Converter, upload only the images of the pages you want to transcribe to Mr. Transcription, and only the parts you need are converted into text.
For example, you can also use it to transcribe just the 5 pages that interest you from a PDF of a 100-page book you scanned yourself.
Q. Does it support vertical PDFs in Chinese or Korean?
A. Yes, it does.
The vertical-writing transcription feature of Mr. Transcription supports Chinese, Korean, and Mongolian in addition to Japanese.
Vertical PDFs in these languages can also be converted into text with the same steps: convert them into images with PDF Image Converter, then load them into Mr. Transcription.
Q. Are Mr. Transcription and PDF Image Converter free to use?
A. Yes, both are free to use.
PDF Image Converter requires no registration, is completely free, and has no limit on the number of pages.
With Mr. Transcription, you can transcribe up to 10 images per day for free once you register as a free member.
For what you can do for free with Mr. Transcription, please also see this article.
Why not convert vertical PDFs into text with "Mr. Transcription"?
By combining the AI app "Mr. Transcription" with the free "PDF Image Converter", you can easily convert vertical PDFs of books, magazines, newspapers, and old company documents into text with high accuracy.
Because the AI automatically detects multi-column and complex layouts, you can digitize vertical PDFs that you used to transcribe by hand far more easily.
Why not try converting your vertical PDFs into text for free with Mr. Transcription?
■ AI transcription service "Mr. Transcription"
"Mr. Transcription" is an online transcription tool that can be used from zero initial cost and 1,000 yen per month (* free version available).
- Supports more than 20 file formats such as audio, video, and images
- Can be used from both PC and smartphone
- Supports technical terms such as medical care, IT, and long-term care
- Supports creation of subtitle files and speaker separation
- Supports transcription in approximately 100 languages including English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, French, Italian, etc.
To use it, just upload the audio file from the site. Transcription text is available in seconds to tens of minutes.
You can use it for free if you transcribe it for up to 10 minutes, so please try it once.
It is "Mr. Transcription" who can easily transcribe from audio, video, and images.
Mr. Transcription allows you to transcribe for up to 10 minutes for free.
You can copy, download, search, delete, etc. the transcribed text.
You can also create subtitle files, which is ideal for transcription of interview videos.
HP: mojiokoshi3.com
Email: mojiokoshi3.com@gmail.com
Email: mojiokoshi3.com@gmail.com
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