You can use Google Apps Script to extract text from a PDF file and save the extracted text as a new document in Google Drive. The document will also retain the simple formatting of the PDF file.

The following script illustrates how to use the Google Drive API as an OCR engine and extract text from a PDF file on the Internet. The code can be modified to convert PDF files existing in Google Drive to an editable document.

function extractTextFromPDF() {
  // PDF File URL
  // You can also pull PDFs from Google Drive
  var url = "https://img.labnol.org/files/Most-Useful-Websites.pdf";

  var blob = UrlFetchApp.fetch(url).getBlob();
  var resource = {
    title: blob.getName(),
    mimeType: blob.getContentType(),
  };

  // Enable the Advanced Drive API Service
  var file = Drive.Files.insert(resource, blob, { ocr: true, ocrLanguage: "en" });

  // Extract Text from PDF file
  var doc = DocumentApp.openById(file.id);
  var text = doc.getBody().getText();

  return text;
}

Google Drive API can perform OCR on JPG, PNG, GIF and PDF files. You can also specify the ocrLanguage property to specify the language to use for OCR.

Combine this with the doGet method and you’ve made an HTTP Rest API that can perform OCR on any web document with a simple GET request. This can be modified to work with file upload forms as well.