Building an organization’s memory is vitally important. For the fiscally responsible, keeping the minutes of a meeting so that the attendees can review it later might seem like a challenge. The bottom line is that if you’re looking to save time and money and need an accessible digital copy of your conference paperwork, converting scanned copy to word is an option worth considering.
Paper document is one of the oldest formats for storing data. If you have stored important information on paper documents, it may be time to convert them to MS Word format. It is a safe way to transfer your vital information from scanned or old faded paper documents to MS Word format. This article provides instructions on how to convert a paper document to MS Word format and use Optical Character Recognition features effectively in an easy way.
The question arise, can a scanned document be converted to word ?The answer is yes, with the help of optical character recognition ( OCR) software applications, you can easily convert paper documents like receipts, notes, police tickets and forms. The process is called scanning . The image you get from this method is not editable. To edit it , you need to convert it to word or excel file.
Do you want to learn about can a scanned document be converted to word? Or maybe you are interested in can scanned copy be converted to word? Copy the following text and paste it into the search box on any search engine, and you will find millions of variations of this question. Today, virtually everyone – adults, students, and children – have at least one piece of paper somewhere around the house or in the office that needs converting to a digital file. If you have used Yahoo Answers before, you know that there is an abundance of questions related to converting documents.
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.
Free Download or Buy PDFelement right now!
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.
Turn Scanned PDF into Word for Editing Using Adobe Acrobat Pro
Adobe Acrobat Pro is among the top converter software that is best suited for the scan PDF to Word conversion process. In fact, it rides on the slogan that you need not retype, re-format, or rescan any content from a scanned PDF when the built-in and automated OCR is at your disposal.
This PDF image to Word converter is popular for the instant conversion of any scanned PDF into editable and searchable Word while carrying over text, tables, and custom fonts to retain the original look. Amazingly, you can also OCR specific sections of a PDF when the need arises.
Steps to Convert Scanned PDF to Word using Adobe Acrobat Pro:
Step 1: Open the scanned PDF file. Click on the “File” menu and from the list option, choose “Open…”. Alternatively, you can just use the “Ctrl+O” hotkey. Use the resulting “Open” window to import the PDF file.
Step 2: Export the scanned PDF into editable Word. Again, using the “File” menu, select the “Export To” option, select “Microsoft Word” from the sidekick menu, and then pick either Word Document (DOCX) or Word 97-2003 Document (DOC).
Step 3: Configure output options and convert. In the resulting “Save As PDF” window, choose your output directory of choice, click on the “Settings…” button to adjust various parameters including the “Text Recognition Settings”, save the changes using the “OK” button, and finally hit the “Save” button.
Convert Scanned PDF to Word Using Best PDF to Word OCR Software
TalkHelper PDF Converter OCR is our pick for the best PDF to Word converter software. It boasts unmatched comprehensiveness when converting to and from the PDF format. The highlight feature here is the advanced OCR (Optical Character Recognition) that extracts text data including tables from a scan PDF overly fast and has high accuracy levels.
To literate on the OCR, over 46 recognition languages are supported to guarantee that extra accurate PDF to Word OCR process. Even better, for a multi-page scan PDF, you can choose to convert single pages, a page range, or the entire document depending on your needs; not forgetting that batch conversion is available as well.
Steps to Convert Scanned PDF to Editable Word in High Quality:
Step 1: Add the scanned PDF to convert. With the “PDF To Word” mode selected, click on the “Add File(s)” button, go to the source directory, select the image-based PDF file, and click on the “Open” button.
Step 2: Set OCR options. Head over to the “Convert Mode:” section, select the “OCR (Support Scanned PDF)” option, and then choose the “Recognition Language:” matching the scanned document you added.
Step 3: Choose your preferred output folder and convert. At the top part of the interface, use the “Output Folder:” section to set where to save the converted editable Word document, and finally hit the “Convert” button.
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.
Why Convert Scanned PDF to Word?
At one point or another, the need to convert scanned PDF to Word will come knocking. Of course, this will be driven by several factors. In this section, we are going to outline reasons that push for the need to perform scan PDF to Word conversion.
- Allow easy editing – since PDFs are more of a document preservation tool, they usually don’t allow direct editing, especially the scanned PDFS. Changing the scanned PDF to an editable Word document (DOC or DOCX) allows for convenient editing.
- Lack of a PDF reader – Scanned PDFs, or PDFs in general, require specialized software to open and view. Programs like Microsoft Word are common on computers and therefore, by converting a scan PDF to Word, viewing is no longer limited.
- Incompatibility with screen readers – Screen readers, especially for visually impaired users, are not usually very compatible with scanned PDF content but by converting into a format like Microsoft Word, this hurdle is jumped pretty easily.
- Extract and re-use text data – Since scanned PDFs do not allow for direct copy-pasting or extracting content like tables, most of the time you will be forced to resort to retyping. But by converting the scanned or image-based PDF into DOC or DOCX, you get rid of all that hassle.
Conclusion
Scanned document is copy on paper converted into digitised form, through the help of scanner. People can save scanned copy to image files or PDF, but these file types are not very supportive for further editing. But Word files are supported by most of the word processors and will always be readable. Thus, there is a need to convert scanned copy to Word for supporting further writing and editing process.
Unless you’re a document scanning pro, chances are you’ve been tasked with converting a scanned business contract or legal document to a Microsoft Word format. If so, then you’ll be happy to know that the process isn’t nearly as complicated as it sounds. Whether you want to use a scanned document as basis for a new document or need to edit the contents of existing documents that were previously saved as a scan, it’s often easier to work with them in the form of one single Word file.