I’m not quite sure what you’re asking. Are you looking for a way to turn PDFs into Finale files?

Nope--I need to run text recognition on PDF files created in Finale.

Would exporting XML directly from Finale rather than PDF help. After all, what format will the Adobe scans give you?

I'm not making any scans. I have original Finale files that I convert to PDF. Acrobat generally can do text recognition on PDFs, but it is unable to do text recognition on PDFs created in Finale.

Acrobat doesn't seem to be able to open XML or musicXML files.

I wonder if Acrobat is having trouble doing text recognition on PDFs created in Finale because some of the fonts have symbol character sets.

So you want the program to read all of the text: titles, composer/arranger, lyrics, and text expressions, tempo alterations, etc.?

Are there no free/cheaper than Adobe, OCR readers? Have you tried any of them, just to see if you get different results?

I am using Acrobat XI because it is the last version of Acrobat that is standalone. ...

Acrobat generally can do text recognition on PDFs, but it is unable to do text recognition on PDFs created in Finale.

Acrobat doesn't seem to be able to open XML or musicXML files.

I wonder if Acrobat is having trouble doing text recognition on PDFs created in Finale because some of the fonts have symbol character sets.

Acrobat Pro 2017 is standalone and receives regular updates from Adobe through June 6, 2022. Mac & Win. I use it all the time. End of life for Acrobat XI was October 15, 2017. Adobe has EDU pricing.

It's probable that it cannot read the symbol fonts but there are other OCR programs that claim to read the font info in pdf music files. Others will read scans. Google is your friend—best to download and eval. Of course, Acrobat cannot read MusicXML.

My university is requiring all documents on our LMS (learning management system) to be digital accessible. 

Sounds like someone needs to have a talk with the university and explain the facts of life..

The text in a Finale PDF -- titling, lyrics, expressions -- should already be text, and be searchable. (Though it may depend on how you made it.) Obviously, there will be a lot of 'noise' from the characters that are use in the music font.

Open a PDF in Acrobat, select the entire document or page, and paste into a text editor. Here's the start of a Vesper psalm:

8. Nisi Dominus
[h = 80] ̇ œ ̇œ.jj ̇ .œ
& b c ̇ œJ œ. œ œ. œ ̇ ̇ ̇ J ̇
Ni - si Do - - - - - - - mi - nus, ni - si Do - - -

OCR is probably failing because there's no 'image' to read that isn't already text.

But yes, you need to talk to your Uni's IT department or whoever devised the policy.

Though long in the tooth, PDFtoMusic may be what you are looking for. It can only extract font info from a file saved as .pdf and is useless on a scan (a picture of a page). PDFtoMusicPro used to be the same way but now has added scanning capabilities.

https://www.myriad-online.com/en/docs/diffpro.htm 

Thank you for your feedback, and I apologize for the delay in responding. Yes, my IT is stupid. In fact, their stupidity is legendary. I was able to successfully get it to work with the most recent version of Acrobat.