How to tell in 10 seconds
- Open the PDF in any viewer.
- Try to select one line with your mouse.
- Words highlight one by one: real text. You can search, copy and change it here.
- The whole page highlights, or nothing does: a scan. You can view and download it here, but its text cannot be changed, and we do not read words out of the picture.
A scan you can search
Some scans were run through text recognition elsewhere. We do not treat them as scans, but the words are still part of the photo, so a change may leave a visible patch. Open the file here and each block shows what to expect.
Need an editable copy?
Ask whoever made the document for a PDF saved straight from Word, Pages or Google Docs, not a printed and scanned copy.
Related: why the text will not change.