Today, scanners have become one of the most important devices for everyday use in different fields. Whether you need to bring your documents and pictures in order or need to store them for any significant amount of time, scanning them is something you can rely on.
Can a scanned PDF document be converted to Word? This is a common topic of discussion that has been circulating around the Internet for some time now. Fortunately, the answer is yes, scanned documents can be converted into Word format. However, this action does not involve the process of printing the PDF then re-scanning it.
Documents are scanned and stored into digital format, enabling multiple users to access it from a remote location and improve its productivity. All the modern organizations attempt to integrate latest technology in their working process to gain maximum efficiency, which is why converting scanned PDF into editable word is been more hectic these days for businesses.
The scanned PDF document has some issues: it cannot be read directly on screen, users cannot edit the content, and it is hard to distribute. So if you want to edit a scanned PDF file then you can use some good PDF software or convert your scanned PDF to word and edit the word file. You can easily convert your scanned PDF to doc, it’s a best way to making a scanned PDF reader-friendly for you.
Scan and edit a document
Word for Microsoft 365 Word 2021 Word 2019 Word 2016 Word 2013 Word 2010
After you scan a document, you can open the document in Word to edit it. How you do this depends on the version of Office that you have installed.
Scan a document as a PDF file and edit it in Word
Tip: The conversion works best with documents that are mostly text.
- Scan your document according to the instructions for your scanner, and save it to your computer as a .pdf file.
- In Word, click File > Open.
- Browse to the location of the PDF file on your computer and click Open.
- A message appears, stating that Word will convert the PDF file into an editable Word document. Click OK.
The converted document might not have a perfect page-to-page correspondence with the original. For example, lines and pages may break at different locations. For more information, see Opening PDFs in Word.
Converting a Scanned PDF
- 1Make sure your scanned document saved as a PDF. Microsoft Word can recognize and convert scanned PDF files into Word documents without requiring any additional software.[1]
- If your document saved as an image (e.g., a JPG or PNG file), you can use New OCR to convert it instead.
- Open the PDF in Word. This process will vary depending on your operating system:
- Windows — Right-click the PDF you want to convert, select Open with, and click Word in the resulting pop-out menu.
- Mac — Click the PDF you want to convert, click the File menu item, select Open With, and click Word in the pop-out menu.https://cb7e3f5400acf16fbb4ddd56c42d0889.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
- 3Click OK when prompted. Word will begin converting the scanned PDF into a Word document.
- This process can take several minutes if your PDF has lots of text or images.
- Open the PDF in Word. This process will vary depending on your operating system:
- Windows — Right-click the PDF you want to convert, select Open with, and click Word in the resulting pop-out menu.
- Mac — Click the PDF you want to convert, click the File menu item, select Open With, and click Word in the pop-out menu.https://cb7e3f5400acf16fbb4ddd56c42d0889.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
- 3Click OK when prompted. Word will begin converting the scanned PDF into a Word document.
- This process can take several minutes if your PDF has lots of text or images.
4Enable editing for the file if needed. If you see a yellow bar with a warning at the top of the Word window, click Enable Editing in the yellow bar in order to unlock the file for editing.
- This usually only pertains to files you’ve downloaded (e.g., if you downloaded your scanned PDF from a cloud service).
5Clean up your document. Converting scanned files into Word documents isn’t an exact science; you may have to add missing words, remove excess spaces, and fix typos before your Word document is ready to go.
6Save the document. Once you’re ready to save the converted document as its own Word file, do the following:
- Windows — Press Ctrl+S, then enter a file name, select a save location, and click Save.
- Mac — Press ⌘ Command+S, then enter a file name, select a save location from the “Where” drop-down box, and click Save.
Generally speaking, converting PDF to Word is straightforward. If it’s a regular text-based PDF file, the process is simple to revert it back to a Word file (.docx) – this can be done in Microsoft Word. If you’re dealing with scanned PDFs (image files), read on for the process outlined after that.
What about converting scanned PDF to editable Word documents?
If you’re talking about a scanned PDF to Word conversion, that is a bit different than the above procedure. A scanned PDF is essentially an image file, and so the text can’t be edited.
Many people who have scanned PDFs (images) with text in them would like to convert them into a format like Word where they can then have the document be editable.
A scanned PDF to Word conversion is a different kind of process, but it can easily be done with Soda PDF’s free online PDF converter.
Convert scanned PDF to editable Word documents for free online
Note that the Soda PDF solution works with either regular text-based or scanned PDF documents.
To convert scanned PDFs, it will use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to turn the scanned PDF document (which is an image) into an editable Word format. Don’t worry – the optical character recognition (OCR) software we use will retain the quality of your original scanned PDF document.
Here’s how to do it:
- Go the Soda PDF site.
- Select the free Online Tools menu. Click on View More.
- Select PDF to Word from the array of icons.
- Drag and drop the document you want to convert. It will automatically start the conversion process.
- Download the converted Word document when ready and view it in your browser.
What is Soda PDF?
Soda PDF is a suite of tools designed to cover all of your PDF management requirements. It’s more than just a PDF to Word converter.
With it you can edit, sign, merge, compress, convert PDF documents, and much more.
You can access Soda PDF in 3 different ways:
- Soda PDF free one-off web-based tools – works on all platforms
- Soda PDF Online (full suite) – ideal for Mac users
- Soda PDF Desktop (full suite) – Windows only
What is the difference between all these Soda PDF versions?
It basically all comes down to features and functionality.
For example, the Soda PDF website-based functions are simple, one-off solutions to people searching to manage PDF documents – such as edit or convert PDF to Word.
These functions are free, but also limited. When using them, you can only work with one document at a time.
For users looking to do more, we offer both Soda PDF online and desktop versions.
They both need an account registration, a download/installation and feature a 7-day free trial, and with these you can process many documents at the same time.
Each tool on the site is designed for converting one document from scanned PDF to Word (or whatever else you need like edit, merge, etc.). These are always free and are not part of the account registration or 7-day trial process.
Is Soda PDF really free?
Only the website-based functions like the PDF converter are, and they can do more than convert PDFs to editable Word files.
Note that you’ll only be working with single documents when you use these PDF conversion tools.
The desktop and online apps have a free trial. You can download and install them quickly and easily and work offline with the desktop version if you need to.
These will allow you to work with more than one file at a time, so you can batch convert multiple scanned PDF files.
Are there any other limitations to Soda PDF’s free web-based functions?
As we’ve mentioned, with the free solutions on the Soda PDF website, you can only work with a single scanned PDF file (or single Word doc) at a time, but there’s also a limit to the size of file you can work with.
These solutions just an easy way to do one-off tasks, like convert your scanned PDFs to editable Word files.
There’s also a daily limit for using them. They are designed for people who just need a quick, free and easy way to manage their document or image, such as doing a quick scanned PDF file conversion task.
If you’re looking for more power and functionality, you can always check out Soda PDF’s full online version if you’re on a Mac or PC, or download and install the Soda PDF Desktop app if you’re using a PC.
How to convert a Scanned PDF to Word?
- Open PDF2Go and go to the PDF to Word converter.
- Upload your file. You can do so via drag and drop into the purple box, choosing it from Dropbox or Google Drive, or your hard drive.
- Enable Convert with OCR. Improve the result by selecting the language(s) of your scanned document.
- Optional: Change the Word file format if it suits your needs.
- Start the conversion.
Is this converter free?
All features of PDF2Go are, in their basic usage, free. This also includes the scanned PDF to Word converter. There are only a few limitations, such as a file size limit of 100 MB, and the simultaneous conversion of three files (for free registered users it’s five files).
Are my scans safe?
On PDF2Go we do whatever we can to guarantee the safety of your scans. All servers and connections for the upload and download of your files are encrypted using 256-bit SSL encryption. This makes the transfer of your files between your device and our servers safe and secure.
The link with which you can download your converted Word document is non-guessable and expires after 24 hours or 10 downloads, whichever occurs first. Your files are not manually checked by us and the rights maintain with you at all times.
Here’s how to convert a PDF to Word using Microsoft Word
Wondering how much time you can save using Soda PDF’s easy-to-use document solutions? Here’s the (many) steps you’ll need to take if you want to convert a PDF to Word using Microsoft Office:
- Locate the file you want to open and right-click on it. This will open a menu box. If you’re using a Mac and don’t have a right mouse button, press Control as you click on it.
- Select Open with near the top of the menu. Another menu will appear.
- Click Word from the menu list. This will open Word and display the PDF.
- Click OK to convert the file when prompted. Word will convert the file to a .docx format to display it.
- Edit the document. Note that your newly converted document may not be perfect. There might be page to page discrepancies due to line and page breaks, graphics, and so on. Making manual adjustments might be required.
- If you downloaded the PDF from the internet (saved it from an email attachment for example), a bar at the top of the document will appear with a button marked “enable editing.” Make sure you click on that button if you want to edit your document.
- Finally, Save the converted PDF.
Conclusion
Whether it’s important work documents or personal photos and memories, we often have a need to preserve our old paper documents. But as years pass by, we find them harder to manage. There are scanning services that can convert your paper documents into more convenient digital formats, like PDFs and JPEGs, but most of these services can be very expensive. We want inexpensive, hassle free ways to back up our papers.
Yes, a scanned PDF document can be converted to Word. A scanned PDF is nothing but a photograph of an original paper document. If the scanned PDF is opened on a computer using Adobe Acrobat Reader, it can be saved as an editable word file i.e. by converting the scanned pdf to word format through an OCR program. A scanned pdf can be converted to Word provided that you scan the entire page, not just part of it.