Microsoft Syntex: Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for OneDrive for Business

Updated April 16, 2025: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience. We are excited to announce a new capability in the Microsoft 365 admin center that allows administrators to enable Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for OneDrive for Business. Admins can now turn on OCR for selected OneDrive groups and users or enable it for all OneDrive users within their organization. This enhancement ensures that all files become searchable, improving discoverability and supporting compliance initiatives such as eDiscovery. When this will happen: General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out in mid-April 2025 (previously early April) and expect to complete by late April 2025 (previously mid-April). How this will affect your organization: OCR is a pay-as-you-go feature. Turning on the OCR feature will incur cost for the organization.  What you need to do to prepare: Microsoft 365 admins will need to enable OCR for OneDrive in the Microsoft 365 admin portal: Setup - Microsoft 365 admin center. For more information, visit Set up and manage optical character recognition in SharePoint - Microsoft Syntex | Microsoft Learn.