QUESTION: What is OCR?
ANSWER: OCR stands for "Optical Character Recognition." It is a computerized process that enables you to convert text that's represented in bitmap format, which is unsearchable, to text that is searchable.
An OCR system reads text from paper or from a computer file, translates the images of letters, numbers, punctuation marks, etc. into a text-based form, and creates a computer file that contains the translated information. The computer file that gets created contains ASCII codes that represent the letters, numbers, and other symbols, and that's why it is searchable.