Quickstart
From install to your first scanned, OCR’d, and exported document in under five minutes.
Follow this guide once and you'll have a real, working result: a single Searchable PDF — a PDF whose text you can highlight, copy, and search — exported from a document you scanned or imported. The whole path takes about five minutes, and you don't need to configure a template or a scanner first.
What you'll have at the end: one document captured, recognized with OCR, and exported as a Searchable PDF on your computer. From there you can do the same thing in bulk.
Before you start
You need two things: the app installed, and an active license (a paid key, a free trial, or — for evaluation — no account at all).
Install Scanix Desktop
System requirements and the platform-specific installer.
Get a license or trial
Create an account and start a free trial — no credit card needed.
The five-minute path
Activate the app
Launch Scanix Desktop. You can get to work three ways:
- Sign in with the email you used at scanix.co — the app registers this device automatically.
- Paste an activation key into Settings → License if you received a key by email and don't want to sign in.
- Continue without an account to evaluate Scanix before activating.
Air-gapped machine? You can activate fully offline with a signed .lic
file instead. The step-by-step is in Activation.
📸 Screenshot placeholder — quickstart-01: the activation screen
showing Sign in, the Settings → License key field, and
Continue without an account.
Bring in one document
You don't need a template or a configured scanner to start — pick whichever source you have in front of you.
Put a page in your scanner and choose Scan from Scanner. Scanix pulls in the scanned page and opens it in the viewer.
Scanner capture is a Windows feature. On other platforms, import a file or image instead — the rest of this guide is identical.
Choose Import Files to bring in a single PDF or image, or Import Folder to bring in everything in a folder at once. For this first run, one file is plenty. Full details live in Import files & images.
📸 Screenshot placeholder — quickstart-02: the home screen with
Scan from Scanner, Import Files, and Import Folder.
Run OCR
With the document open in the viewer, click OCR · Current page. Scanix recognizes the text on the page and builds the searchable text layer your export will use. You'll see the button report progress as it works.
Prefer it to happen on its own? Turn on Auto-run OCR after import/scan in Settings, and every page you bring in is recognized automatically — no click needed.
📸 Screenshot placeholder — quickstart-03: the viewer sidebar with the
OCR · Current page button mid-recognition.
Export a searchable PDF
Click Process, choose Quick Export, and pick Searchable PDF as the format. Scanix writes the file to the location you choose and confirms the saved path when it finishes. Open that PDF in any reader and try searching for a word on the page — it works, because OCR put a real text layer underneath the image.
That's the whole loop: captured → recognized → exported. You now have a searchable PDF you can hand off, archive, or search like any other document.
📸 Screenshot placeholder — quickstart-04: the export step with
Quick Export selected and Searchable PDF chosen as the format.
Do it again, faster
The single-document loop you just finished is the same loop Scanix runs at scale. A few ways to speed it up:
Next steps
Import files & images
Bring in PDFs, images, and whole folders.
Export formats
See every format Scanix can export, not just searchable PDF.
Activation
Online keys, offline .lic files, and what to do when activation fails.
Getting started
The fuller walkthrough from sign-up to your first scan.
Related
- Installation — system requirements and installer notes.
- Getting started — account, trial, and download.
- Activation — keys, offline activation, troubleshooting.