[@Peter Blaise]
Hi Peter,
A year or two ago, I downloaded what may be the free Acrobat package you refer to — I’d have to go back to check. There seemed to be umpteen hoops that I had to jump through in my attempts to get it working, involving (I think) missing or outdated DLL files that required updating, one by one. Never did actually succeed in getting it working, under Win 7 x64. So, that proved unavailing, but I’m willing to revisit this, particularly for the OCR angle.
In the past, I took a look at CAD-KAS PDF Editor Pro, which looks powerful but struck me as being rather complicated. PDF Element has an editor which they make great claims for and promote widely, may have a low-cost academic-oriented edition (?), may offer a money-back guarantee (?), and which they deeply discount on periodic deals. I bought a license for a previous version of their program, but have not had occasion to use it much. The most I can say is that it may hold some promise for an easier user interface.
[Getting powerful features + relative ease of use may be a big Ask for most any sort of program.]