Adding text as hidden layer in PDF's

Hi, I have some hand written documents (Old genealogy letters) which I would like to be made searchable. Can I scan the documents as PDF’s, then manually word process the documents and add this text as a hidden text layer? Thanks Doctor Keo

About Acrobat OCR.
Three methods.
#1 Searchable Image
#2 Searchable Image (Exact)
#3 -
(a) Formatted Text and Graphics (prior to Acrobat 9)
(b) ClearScan (Acrobat 9)
#1 - Provides OCR output as a hidden text layer. Will perform some "adjustment" to the image.
#2. - Provides OCR output as a hidden text layer. Will not "adjustment" to the image.
#3. a & b
If process thinks it "knows" what the character is then it replaces the image of the character.
If process is not sure what the character is then it flags the character(s) as "suspects".
End-user can edit "suspects".
If process does not know what the character is the character's image is left alone as a bit-mapped image.
Note that "ICR" vice "OCR" is meant for handwritten material that has been scanned.
Acrobat does not provide "ICR".
However, text from a typewritter typically provides accurate OCR provided the scan is at high enough resolution (typically, 300 ppi).
If #1 or #2 is used you can always Save As to a *.txt file.
This can be brought into a text editor, word processor, page layout application, etc.
There, you can create a "clean" copy from which a PDF can be made.
Provide the Scan of the original and use a PDF Bookmark or a Button Field having a link action to go to the copy having the corrected content with renderable text. Make a Catalog index of the cleaned up text PDFs to support advanced search.
For all practicable purposes, there is no manipulation/edits/etc. to the hidden layer of OCR output.
Be well...

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