Document processing and errors
Processing stages, what OCR reads, and the document error reasons.
Processing stages
After upload, each document passes through the stages below before it is ready to review.
Detect
The file type is detected and validated.
Convert
Every document passes through this stage. Non-PDF files are converted to PDF; existing PDFs are cleaned up. It is also where the document's page count and its preview image are produced.
OCR
Scanned or image-only PDFs have their text recognised.
Parse
The document text is split into pages and sections.
Process
The document text is embedded and added to the search index so it can be found.
Linearise
The reviewable PDF is optimised for fast web viewing (linearised) so it opens quickly in the preview.
Finalise
The final step: the document becomes ready to review. Any AI agents set up for the matter are then triggered to run in the background (for example, generating a summary); their results fill in on the already-ready document once extraction finishes.
While a document is still being processed, the Status column shows a progress dial that fills as it moves through the stages above; hover the dial to see which stage it has reached. A document that completes all stages is ready to review and is shown with a blue tick. A document that cannot be processed shows an error with a reason.
What OCR reads
OCR reads text from scanned or image-only pages so the document becomes searchable. Whether it runs at all depends on how much text the PDF already contains — the test looks at the whole document, not page by page.
Some file types never go to OCR at all — their text is taken from the converted PDF instead of being recognised. Which formats these are, and what each supports, is set out in Supported file formats.
In general:
Pages that already contain readable text are left as they are, rather than being recognised again.
Where a PDF needs OCR, BriefTech reads the whole document, however long it is, so all of its pages become searchable. A very large scanned file is read in the background and may take a little longer to finish.
OCR runs the same way whenever BriefTech processes a document, including when you reindex or retry it. Force OCR goes further still: it re-reads every page on demand, even pages that already contain text.
A document whose OCR is skipped — because its text was already available, or its file type doesn't need it — still finishes processing and can be added to the Document Index; only AI features that rely on extracted text are affected.
Force OCR
Force OCR re-reads a document from scratch and replaces whatever searchable text it currently has. Use it when a document already has text but that text is poor — most often a document that arrived with its own text layer, so BriefTech kept that existing text rather than re-reading it (its OCR status is Skipped Text), but that text turns out to be inaccurate, garbled, or misaligned, for example from a low-quality scan or an external OCR tool. Select the documents in the 
tab (or right-click a row) and choose 
. It is available for any document that has finished processing (is ready) and that BriefTech has not already OCR'd successfully. If your selection includes even one document that isn't eligible, the choice does not appear at all — it isn't shown greyed out — so narrow the selection to eligible documents to bring it back.
Force OCR is only for a document that finished processing. A document that failed to process is a different case — fix it with Retry in the Exceptions view, not Force OCR (see Reprocess a failed document).
Because Force OCR commits the document to your indexed set, it draws the standard index charge of 1 credit per 50 pages — the same charge an export makes, brought forward, not a separate OCR fee. Whoever runs it, the credits are taken from the matter owner's balance, not the acting user's.
A document already charged for a previous export or Force OCR is not charged again, and no confirmation appears.
Otherwise BriefTech shows a Confirm Force-OCR dialog with the exact amount, so you can cancel before anything is spent.
Force OCR runs as a background task. A Job Logs window opens automatically to show its progress; you can close it and carry on working, and follow the job later from Background Jobs. When it succeeds, the document re-enters the processing pipeline from the Parse stage — its text is split into pages and sections again, and re-added to the search index — before it returns to ready.
OCR status
The tab includes an OCR column showing what happened to each document's text recognition. Each value is a small coloured icon; hover it to see the status name and a short explanation. It lets you tell at a glance why a document is, or isn't, fully searchable.
Not started
OCR has not run yet — the document is still being processed.
Skipped
The document's file type does not go through OCR; its text comes from the converted PDF instead.
Skipped Text
The document already contained readable text, so those pages were kept as they are; any remaining scanned or image pages were still read.
Missing PDF
No PDF version of the document was available to read, so no text was recognised.
Page limit exceeded
You may see this on an older document that was processed before OCR covered files of any length. On those documents, OCR was limited on very long files; documents are no longer treated this way. If such a document is missing text, run Force OCR to read every page.
Succeeded
OCR read the document's pages successfully.
Running
OCR is in progress — this appears while a Force OCR job is running.
Failed
OCR could not complete, and the document shows a processing error.
Error reasons
Password Protected
The file is locked with a password and cannot be read.
Unsupported Type
The detected file type is not in the supported formats.
Empty File
The file contains no content (zero bytes).
File Too Large
The file exceeds the size limit for its type.
A document that stops for one of the reasons above shows it in the Exception column, in the Exceptions view of the tab. Not every failure has a listed reason, though. If a document fails partway through processing — for example a conversion or OCR step that could not complete — it shows the red error icon with a free-form message instead. That message usually begins with the stage that failed (for example converting: or ocring:), which is the clue to where the document stopped; hover the icon to read it.
For how to fix each error, see Reprocess a failed document.
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