Turn a Scanned Document Into Microsoft Word Document

If you have Word 2007 or a more recent version, you can use it to edit scanned text, which is much faster than typing the whole thing from scratch. To enable this feature and convert a scanned document to editable text, follow these steps.

Steps

Enable Document Imaging

1. Find a list of your installed programs in the Control Panel.
   • Windows 7 or Vista: Go to Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features.
   • Windows XP: Go to Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs > Remove a Program.
2. Select your Microsoft Office edition, then click Change. Your version of Word might be in a Microsoft Office pack or it might just be called Microsoft Office Word.
3. Click Add or Remove Features, and then click Continue.
4. Expand Office Tools, then click on Microsoft Office Document Imaging and select Run all from my Computer.
5. Click Continue, then wait for configuration to complete.

Convert a Scanned Document to Editable Text

1. Scan and/or open the document with Paint. If scanning, follow the sub-steps below. Otherwise, simply open the scanned image with Paint and skip to Step 2.
   • Go to File > From Scanner or Camera to initiate scan if necessary.
   • Choose the settings that best fit your document and hit Scan. Since you are primarily interested in the text, Black and white picture or text is probably best.
2. Go to File > Save or Save As as necessary.
3. Select TIFF from the drop-down list and hit Save. You can now close Paint if you want.
4. Open Microsoft Office Document Imaging. Go to Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office > Microsoft Office Tools and select it from the list, or simply do a search for “microsoft office document imaging.”
5. Open the .tiff file. Simply go to File > Open and locate the file you saved.
6. Hit CTRL+A to select all and CTRL+C to copy. This will initialize text recognition.
7. Open a blank Word document and hit CTRL+V to paste.
8. Correct misspellings as necessary.

Tips

• Plain scanned text converts much better than forms (containing boxes and the like), which lose their formatting.

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