Documents get damaged all the time, which is why it’s important to know how to convert a paper document to Word. If you have a document that has gotten wet, ripped or torn, or just isn’t legible due to age or fading in colour – then you have a situation on your hands. It’s important to take steps as quickly as possible to ensure that you can rescue the good parts of your document while disposing of the damaged parts.
Trying to convert a scanned document to Word format can sometimes be difficult. If you are trying to add a scanned document to a resume, you might find that some programs aren’t built for this type of conversion. Knowing how to convert a scanned document to Word is sometimes necessary when preserving important documents and records.
While the advances in computer technology have grown exponentially, there are times when paper documents still need to be converted to Word. Perhaps you want to save an old scanned document for posterity, or maybe you want a hard copy of it for your records. Whatever the reason, converting a scanned document is really just a matter of deciding on a software solution and using it.
Unless you want to write your own document conversion software, you will have to first find a program that can convert the document format you need. Your search could take hours, days, or weeks and end without satisfactory results if you are not more specific on the inputs you need. To start your search, you may try this article.
Convert Scanned PDF to Editable Word in Batch
Step 1. Launch PDFelement
Launch PDFelement and click the “Batch Process” on the main interface, a pop window will appear. You can use the OCR function to convert the scanned PDF file into editable Word in batch.
Step 2. OCR Scanned PDF in Batch
Go to “OCR” on the left toolbar, then clicking “Add PDF files here” to add scanned PDF files. In the right-conner of the pop-up window, select the “Editable Text” option, and select the correct language for your PDF content. Click “Start” to begin the OCR process and you will find the editable PDF file in your local folder. You can also easily edit a scanned PDF with PDFelement.
Step 3. Convert Scanned PDF to Editable Word in Batch
After performing OCR, the newly created editable PDF file will be saved in your local folder. Click the “Convert” option on the pop batch process window, add the converted PDF file, and choose “Word” as the output format. Click the “START” button, then you can convert scanned PDFs to editable Word documents in batch.
Video on How to Convert Scanned PDF to Word
Compared to convert scanned PDF to Word online, you will get high-quality results with the desktop converter. Most importantly, it is safer. Here is the video tutorial for the best-scanned PDF to Word converter.
Convert Scanned PDF to Word with PDF Converter Pro
Wondershare PDF Converter Pro is a useful program for users who simply want to convert their PDF files to Word documents, PowerPoint, Excel, or other popular formats. The program’s OCR feature lets you convert scanned PDF files into searchable and editable files.
Step 1. Add a Scanned PDF
Download and install Wondershare PDF Converter Pro on your computer. From there, launch the program to import target files. Go to “OCR”, click on the “Add” tab, or drag and drop the scanned PDF files that you want to convert to Word into the program window.
Step 2. Convert scanned PDF to Word with OCR
Once the scanned PDF is open, Wondershare PDF Converter Pro will automatically launch the OCR window. Then select “Word” as the output format and choose an OCR language and click on the “Convert” button. Finally, you will the editable Word document.
Tips: What is OCR?
OCR is an advanced technology to recognize characters within a scanned PDF or a digital image, which stands for Optical Character Recognition. The OCR technology in PDFelement provides over 25 languages like English, German, French, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Italian, Japanese, and other more that can help you convert scanned PDF to editable word with various different languages.
Alternative Method
Converting your file from PDF to Word is easy. The process simply returns the contents of your PDF file to its original format.
However, if you are scanning documents and saving them to PDF, most times, they’re stored as images. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is required to extract the text and save the converted documents into editable Word files.
Our online tool offers both options. And yes, it’s free to use.
How to Convert Scanned PDF to Word Documents Online
- Go to the Smallpdf PDF to Word online tool.
- Upload your PDF file via drag-and-drop.
- Select the option you need—the OCR conversion is only available as a Pro feature.
- Wait for the conversion to finish.
- Download your editable Word file.
Scanned PDF to Word in a nutshell
The process of converting the scanned PDF file into an editable Word doc may take a few extra seconds, as our OCR needs to recognize the text of the paper documents stored as scans in PDF form. On the bright side, being a fast online PDF to Word converter—loved by over 40 million monthly users, and counting, the whole process to convert the file from scanned PDF to Word shouldn’t take too long.
Is the Scanned Pdf to Word Converter Free?
All of Smallpdf’s tools are free to use with some limitations—our OCR Word converter is a Pro feature. You can scan to pdf online, as well as convert images, spreadsheets, and powerpoints to pdf, even when these documents are scans. To use our optical character recognition (OCR) technology to convert images to editable Word, check out our JPG to Word guide.
Cool, But What Are the Limitations?
Free tasks are limited to two per day and some features are only accessible with a Pro subscription. File size is also limited to a maximum of 5 GB, as high-resolution scans may be quite large.
Getting a Smallpdf Pro account will remove the daily task limit and allow you to use the tools as often as you need to convert images to pdf, or scanned pdf to word, or use our scan to pdf converter.
Are My Scans Safe?
Utmost security of your files is a guarantee. We’ve recognized the concern of general users when it comes to cloud services from day one. Smallpdf does everything in our power to take care of your files; we use TLS encryption, delete files after one hour, and use the reliable Amazon Web Services to host and handle your documents. For full disclosure, check out our Terms and Privacy page.
How to Convert a Scanned Document to PDF – HiPDF
There is another method to convert scanned documents into PDF. HiPDF is one of the best online PDF converters, it can not only convert PDF to Microsoft Office format but also encrypt PDF, compress PDF, crop PDF, etc. Now, follow the steps below to learn how to convert scanned documents to PDF.
Step 1. Upload Scanned Document
When you open the HiPDF website, click the “Convert” option on the top toolbar, and select “Image to PDF.” After selecting the “Image to PDF” option, you will open a new web page that allows you to upload the scanned document. Click the “Select File” button and then open the scanned document. In addition, you can upload files by dragging them to the web page.
Step 2. Convert scanned document to PDF
After uploading the scanned document, click the “CONVERT” button. In only a few seconds, the scanned document will be converted to a PDF file and you can click “DOWNLOAD” to save your file.
How to Convert a Scanned Document to PDF – PDF Converter Pro
Wondershare PDF Converter Pro is another powerful PDF converter which can not only help you convert scanned document to PDF but can also help you convert PDF to other Microsoft Office format. Here, you will be guided on the easiest way to convert scanned documents to PDF.
Step 1. Add scanned document
Launch Wondershare PDF Converter Pro, go to the “OCR” tab, then click the “Add” button to add a scanned document into this PDF converter.
Step 2. Convert scanned document to PDF
After uploading your scanned document, choose “PDF” under the “Format” drop-down menu, then go to “OCR Setting” to choose the language you need to recognize. Click the “SUBMIT” icon then click the “Convert” button, the OCR process will be finished in seconds. Then you will get the converted PDF file.
Tips for How to Convert Scanned Document to PDF using OCR
- There are more than twenty languages that you can select from. This will ensure that you won’t have issues with the recognition of special characters in your document.
- If you have a larger document with hundreds of pages, you can customize the page range as you wish.
- After you access the OCR feature, you are able to select multiple options such as how your document should be displayed, the zoom view for your document, and the default font for a text box.
- You can convert your files from multiple formats such as image, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, EPUB, HTML, into PDF and vice versa, from PDF to many other formats.
PDFMate PDF Converter
PDFMate PDF Converter, as its name implies, is a free PDF converter that lets you convert scanned PDF to Word. Using these freeware, you can convert scanned PDF files to editable Word documents using OCR technology. It supports DOC format as well as various other file formats to convert scanned PDFs to, such as EPUB, TXT, IMG, HTML, SWF, JPG, etc. The process of conversion is very simple; let us checkout.
How to convert scanned PDF to Word in PDFMate PDF Converter:
- First, add the input scanned PDF file to it that you want to convert.
- Now, from available output formats, select DOC format.
- Finally, enter output folder location and click the Convert button to start the conversion.
Additional Feature:
- Merge: It lets you convert and merge multiple PDF files into a single Word document.
Limitations:
The free version has various locked features like batch conversion, 3 page limit for scanned PDFs, etc. To remove these and more restrictions, you need to purchase its pro version.
UniPDF
UniPDF is a free scanned PDF to Word converter software for Windows. It is a dedicated software that is used for converting PDFs to various formats including Word (DOC, RTF), Text, HTML, and multiple images (TIFF, PNG, JPG, etc.). Using it, you can convert normal as well as scanned PDFs to Word files. The good part is that it lets you batch convert scanned PDFs to Word that saves you some effort and a lot of time. Now, let’s checkout steps to perform conversion in this freeware.
How to convert scanned PDF to Word in UniPDF:
- Firstly, add one or multiple scanned PDFs to its Home tab using the Add button.
- Now, select Word format from the available Output Format section.
- Next, go to the Settings tab and configure options including output Word format, image format, etc.
- After that, hit the Convert button to quickly start batch scanned PDF to Word conversion.
Limitation:
It is free for non-commercial use only.
How to Pick the Best Converter?
We offer you to take advantage of online services for making Word from PDF as they are very user-friendly and most of them can be applied for free. Forget about any downloads of additional applications and constant updates of desktop tools. Digital converting solutions require just a few steps to get a desired result:
- find a specific service on the internet;
- upload a form you need to transform;
- after clicking the “Start now” button get it processed;
- save a newly created file to your device or cloud storage.
Conclusion
It will be easy to convert your scanned image file to Word right now without any professional knowledge and help. The simple way to convert scanned copy to Word is easier than you thought, especially if you don’t have the upgraded version of Word, which enables you convert a scanned document in several modes.
Have you ever had a document that you needed to convert to the MS Word format? These documents may have been downloaded from your scanner and stored as PDF, or may have been saved as images and stored in folders on your computer. You wanted to edit the document and create a nice, clean file, but it can’t be opened in any word processor you’ve tried.