Share via

OCR stopped working in embedded printouts in OneNote for Mac v16.103

Paul Gallagher 20 Reputation points
2025-11-18T18:40:23.42+00:00

I scan documents and insert them into OneNote pages as printouts to reduce paper in our home office.

Documents scanned and inserted before December 2024 have OCR information and are searchable. Documents scanned and inserted after April 2025 have not been OCRd and their text appears not to be searchable in OneNote.

The OneNote for MacOS help file suggests that OCR should still occur on these files but it seems to have stopped working.

I am currently using OneNote 16.103 and the macOS Tahoe 26.1

Microsoft 365 and Office | OneNote | For home | MacOS
0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
  1. Edward Schlobohm01 9,255 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2025-11-18T19:27:51.1+00:00

    Hi,

    Thanks for reaching out. The OCR feature in OneNote for Mac depends on Microsoft’s cloud service, not local processing, so it can be delayed or fail if the service has issues.

    This problem is more common on non-Windows platforms. Image format and quality also matter—PDFs and very large images often fail, while PNG or JPG usually work better.

    If OCR isn’t working, try uploading the image or PDF to OneNote on the web, as it sometimes processes OCR more reliably. You can also use other OCR tools before importing, like Adobe Acrobat, Google Keep, or Enolsoft PDF Converter OCR. If you have a Windows PC, PowerToys Text Extractor is another option.

    In OneNote, right-click the image and look for “Make Text in Image Searchable.If it’s missing, OCR hasn’t processed yet. Tools like OneNote Batch can force OCR on all images. Some users have also fixed the issue by downgrading to an earlier version, such as 16.96, until Microsoft releases a permanent solution.

    In OneNote, right-click the image and look for “Make Text in Image Searchable.” If that option is missing, OCR hasn’t processed yet. Some third-party tools like OneNote Batch can force OCR on all images. Lastly, some users have had success by downgrading OneNote to an earlier version, like 16.96, until Microsoft releases a fix.

    Hope this works, Please let me know how it goes,

    Regards,

    Edward

1 additional answer

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Paul Gallagher 20 Reputation points
    2025-11-23T02:34:18.6766667+00:00

    Answering my own question for the benefit of any others who have a similar issue:

    I found that to get PDF printouts on One Note for Mac pages to have searchable text, I need to create the One Note pages in One Note desktop for Windows (the version that comes with Microsoft 365). Since I have migrated to a Mac as my main PC that would be inconvenient on a document by document basis. But there is an add-on available for purchase, OneNote Batch, that will do this operation for a batch of files. So my workflow for my paperless office is to scan on my Mac and then every so often e.g. weekly I will run OneNote batch on my Windows PC to generate the OneNote pages. I will have to do a one time large batch to reload all of the scans since April 2025.

    The following did not seem to work: OneNote Batch for Mac (doesn't have a batch PDF import capability); opening pages created in OneNote for Mac in OneNote desktop for windows (the command to make the printout text searchable can be clicked but has no effect); similarly opening OneNote Mac pages in OneNote Web didn't work.

    0 comments

Your answer

Answers can be marked as 'Accepted' by the question author and 'Recommended' by moderators, which helps users know the answer solved the author's problem.