NEWS FROM U.S. DISTRICT COURT
June 13, 2025
OCR Functionality. Chambers would like to remind all attorneys, including the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Federal Public Defender’s Office, and all their staff, that electronic filings being uploaded to CM/ECF should have Optical Character Recognition (OCR) functionality. OCR is necessary to search and extract text.
To determine if a PDF document has OCR functionality before it is e-filed in CM/ECF, follow the below steps in Adobe Acrobat. (These steps may vary depending on your version of Adobe Acrobat.)
- • Open the PDF document
- • Hold down the Ctrl + F keys so the Find dialog box opens
- • In the Find dialog box, type in a known word or phrase from the document
- • Select the Next button
If the word or phrase is highlighted in the document, the document has OCR functionality. If the word or phrase is not highlighted, the document does NOT have OCR functionality.
Documents converted to PDF typically have OCR functionality, but documents scanned to PDF may not. For additional assistance on scanning a document to PDF so it contains OCR functionality, please refer to the “How to Scan a Document to PDF so it has OCR Functionality” section of the CM/ECF User Manual and Administrative Procedures.
Closure Reminders. The Court will be closed on Thursday, June 19th in observance of Juneteenth National Independence Day. The Court will also be closed on Friday, July 4th in observance of Independence Day.