How do I scan to PDF on an HP printer?

Last reviewed: October 14, 2026 · Markdown version

Use HP's own app on the phone or computer the printer is set up with: open the app, click your printer, click a scan tile, scan, and when you save, pick Basic PDF as the file type. Add more pages before saving and they all go into that one PDF. Whether the text in that PDF can be searched is a question HP's standard scanning guide leaves open (How to scan with an HP printer, HP Support, read 14 October 2026). A separate option, Searchable PDF, appears among HP's advanced scanning features, which need an eligible printer set up in the app with an HP account. The details are below, from HP's support pages read today.

Which HP app

HP now has two. Its scanning guide says "The HP app replaces HP Smart, so if it is available for your device and printer, use the HP app", and that until it is, "HP Smart provides full-feature printer support" (How to scan with an HP printer, HP Support, read 14 October 2026). HP's page sends you to 123.hp.com, where you search for your printer to see which app it uses.

The steps

"Open the HP app and then click your printer." Then "Click a scan tile."
Put the page on the scanner glass, or in the automatic document feeder for documents, and click Scan or Printer Scan. (Camera Scan, for photographing a page with the phone instead, is on the same screen.)
Choose a job type such as Document, and adjust the settings if you need to. HP's example for Resolution is "300 dpi for normal quality or 1200 dpi for high quality."
Scan, then accept or adjust the edges if the app asks.
On the Preview screen, rotate or remove pages, or click "+ Add" for more.
Click Save (or share). HP's own example: "click Save, and then click Basic PDF as your File Type to save multiple scans as one file or Image to save them as individual files. When prompted, choose a folder on your device or cloud account, and then click Save."

That last choice is the one that decides where the file is later. If a scan seems to have vanished, where scanned documents go covers the usual places.

A multi-page document as one PDF

HP's guide has a section for this, and the only difference from the steps above is at the end: keep clicking "+ Add to scan or import additional files until you have added all the files you would like to include", then "click Basic PDF as your File Type" (the HP scanning guide above). Choosing Image instead gives you one file per page.

Will the PDF be searchable?

HP's main scanning guide does not say whether a Basic PDF carries the text of the page or only a picture of it. It is safest to assume a picture until you check: open the PDF and try to select a word, or follow how to tell whether a PDF holds text.

HP does document a route to text. Its page on the app's advanced scanning features says they "include a Convert to Text feature that saves files as searchable PDFs or editable text files"; at the save step you "Select Searchable PDF, Word Document (*.docx), or Plain Text (*txt) file types (options depend on the operating system)". Those features have a condition: "To access the advanced scanning features for an HP+ or eligible non-HP+ printer, the printer must be set up in the HP app with an HP account", and HP lists an ineligible printer or not being signed in as reasons they may be missing (Using advanced scanning features (HP app), HP Support, read 14 October 2026). That page does not say whether the text conversion runs on your device or on HP's servers. On Windows, HP's scanning guide also notes that "You can use HP Scan for Windows to save scans as editable text with Optical Character Recognition (OCR)", depending on the printer.

If the scan came out as a picture

A PDF of page images can still be made searchable afterwards by running OCR on it. Making a scanned PDF searchable compares the ways to do that and the one question that matters most, which is where the OCR runs.

If your scans end up on an iPhone or Android phone, DocFind is one of those ways: it reads scanned PDFs on your device and then searches them like any other document, and matches found through OCR are labelled as such. Searching, indexing and reading scanned pages work with no internet connection, and DocFind never uploads your documents. It leaves the file itself unchanged, so the PDF you open elsewhere stays a picture. It reads printed text, not handwriting, and any page it could not make searchable is reported.