Today I’d like to share with you some tips on how to convert a scanned document to word. The reason why I’M sharing this is because this is one of the most frequently asked questions by my readers. Students and professionals sometimes may need to convert scanned documents or paper documents in PDF format into editable MS Word format.
One of the most common problems office workers face is that they forget to file an important paper. They lose it either due to a sudden wind or because of their carelessness. When a file cannot be found through the search option, many employees feel discouraged and write it off as a loss. However, you can still retrieve these precious papers using your computer. One of the ways you can do this is by converting it into editable files such as any type of document formats, like txt, PDF or Word document.
Need to convert a scanned document to Word? There are a lot of free tools out there, but you should look at what makes our application special. Yes, we do support converting PDF and images. However, our main focus is on converting scanned documents.
Converting a scanned document to rich text can be done with many tools. Scanned documents come in two distinct varieties – ones that have already been converted to text and PDFs/TIFs that haven’t. Both of these file types are distinct enough to merit mentioning their own methods of conversion.
Scan Document to Word via PDF
As Microsoft explains, you can open a scanned PDF in Word easily on versions after Word 2010. First, use your scanner and save the document as a PDF in a location you’ll be able to find easily. Open Word and go to “File” and “Open” before navigating to your PDF file. When you select the file, Word displays a pop-up informing you that it will attempt to import the PDF as an editable Word file. All you have to do is click “OK” to start the process.
This approach tends to work better when the document has a good resolution, so if you have trouble – and it’s possible you will – scan the document in higher quality and try it again. This method doesn’t work with handwritten text.
Alternatively, you can use the Office Lens app, which is available on iOS, Android and Windows Phone, to scan the document directly into a Word document. This method is a more direct approach and is worth trying if you have trouble with the importation process on Word itself.
Online OCR Service
An alternative to using the features in Word is to use an online optical character recognition (OCR) service to convert the text in your PDF to a Word document, as discussed by Computer Hope. These services basically do the same thing as the native Word option, but they’re a good alternative if you have an older version of Word. Visit a site like OnlineOCR or SodaPDF; upload the PDF file on the main page and follow the instructions on the site to complete the conversion. For example, at OnlineOCR, you choose your file, select the language and output format, and press “Convert” to initiate the process.
Using Google Docs
Google Docs has a built-in OCR system, which you can use to convert your PDFs to text before copying them over to Microsoft Word. First, open Google Docs and click the cog icon to bring up the settings menu. Hover your mouse over “Upload settings” and make sure “Convert text from uploaded PDF and image files” is checked. Once this option is selected, all you have to do is upload a PDF to Google Docs, and it automatically recognizes the text and makes it editable.
To save as a Word document, press “Ctrl” and “A” to highlight all the text and then press “Ctrl” and “C” to copy it. Paste the text into a Word document and save it as you ordinarily would.
Importing the PDF as an Image
If nothing else works, you can still get your scanned document into Word as an image, as described by Microsoft. Scan the document or take a picture of it with your smartphone and save it on your computer in an easy-to-find location. Go to the “Insert” tab on Word and choose “Pictures” from the “Illustrations” group. Navigate to your image in the window that pops up, highlight it and click “Insert.” Then, position and resize the image as needed.
How to Extract Pages From a Microsoft Word Document
If you have a large Microsoft Word document and you want to extract specific pages from it, the best method might not be clear to you. However, there are a few approaches you can use to extract pages from a Word file, from the very simple to the more efficient but technically demanding. If you want to save the file as a PDF, there is an additional option, but regardless of the format you want the extracted pages to be in, there is an approach that will work.
The Copy and Paste Method
The simplest way to extract specific pages from a Word document is to copy the content you want and paste it into a new file, as described by Microsoft. Highlight the content on the page you want, and press “Ctrl” and “C” to copy it. Open a new file with “File” or the Windows icon and then “New” and then press “Ctrl” and “V” to paste the content into the new document. You can paste the content anywhere you want – a WordPad file or a Google Docs page, for example – and if you want to save it as a PDF, you can either use Word’s “Print to PDF” feature or an online converter.
Saving Only the Current Page
If you’re looking to save the page in question as a PDF, Word can do this easily using native features, as explained by GCF Global for Word 2013 or later. Position the cursor on the page you want to extract. Go to “File,” “Export” and “Create PDF/XPS” to open the “Save As” dialog. Choose the location you want to save the file, give it a name, and choose “Options.”
The first section in this new window gives you the option to save all pages, the current page, or pages within a specified range. Choose the appropriate option (if you don’t have your cursor on the right page, you can specify the page number you want), click “OK” and choose “Publish.” This approach is useful if you want to extract pages from Word with headers and footers intact, which doesn’t happen by default with the copy and paste method.
For older versions of Word, choose “Print” from the main menu and select “Microsoft Print to PDF” from the list of printers. Use the “Page Range” section to specify the page you want to print and click “OK” to save it.
Visual Basic Approach
If you’re comfortable copying a bit of code, you can extract a specific page from a Word document using Visual Basic, with an approach given by Data Numen. Make sure your cursor is on the page you want to extract, then either go to the “Developer” tab (if you have it) and “Visual Basic,” or press “Alt” and F11 if you don’t have the tab.
Choose “Normal” from the options on the left of the window and click “Insert” and choose “Module.” Double-click the module and paste the code below into the editing area.
Sub SaveCurrentPageAsANewDoc()
Dim objNewDoc As Document
Dim objDoc As Document
Dim strFileName As String
Dim strFolder As String
‘ Initialization
Set objDoc = ActiveDocument
strFolder = InputBox(“Enter folder path here: “)
strFileName = InputBox(“Enter file name here: “)
‘ Copy current page.
objDoc.Bookmarks(“\Page”).Range.Select
Selection.Copy
‘ Open a new document to paste the selection.
Set objNewDoc = Documents.Add
Selection.Paste
objNewDoc.SaveAs FileName:=strFolder & “\” & strFileName & “.docx”
objNewDoc.Close
End Sub
Now click the “Play” icon to run the code, entering the path for the folder where you want to save the extracted page and the name of the file into the fields that pop up.
Extract Pages From a Word Document Online
Alternatively, you can use an online tool to extract a page or pages from a larger document, such as the document splitter on GroupDocs or Aspose. Upload your file, enter the number of the page you want to extract, and then click “Split” or “Split Now” to complete the process.
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.
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.
Final Thoughts:
UniPDF is a good PDF converter that supports various output file formats and lets you batch convert scanned PDF to Word.
Scan the Document
- Clean the surface of the scanning bed with a soft cloth and streak-free glass cleaner. A scanner will pick up dirt and fingerprints in the scan process, which can affect the quality of the output image.
- Open the lid and place the document face-down on the scanning bed. Align the document by using the markers along the perimeter of the glass and then close the lid carefully.
- Launch the scanning software that came with your scanner. For example, if you are using an HP scanner or All-in-One printer, the software will be located in the HP folder.
- Select “Document” as the scan type and then choose whether you want to scan the document in color or black and white.
- Select an output format for the scanned document, usually an image type such as TIFF or GIF, or a PDF.
- Choose a resolution, if prompted, that produces a high quality file such as 300dpi. While selecting a higher dpi will create a larger-sized file, the image will be sharper. However, be aware that higher resolution files take more time to upload and send.
- Click the “Scan” button. When the scanning process completes, click “Save.” Enter a file name for the document and select a destination folder, such as My Documents. Click the “Save” button.
Email the Document
- Open Windows Live Mail and log in to your account.
- Compose a new message by clicking the “Email Message” button on the Home toolbar.
- Enter the recipient’s email address, include a subject line and then enter the message you want to include with the attached document.
- Click the “Attach File” button on the Message toolbar. Navigate through your folders in the Windows Explorer dialog box and select the scanned document. Click “Open” to attach the file to the email.
- Click the “Send” button.
Conclusions
Microsoft Word is the most popular word processor in the world. While it has some excellent tools and features, many of which you may only know of if you’ve been using it for a while, Word also has rather uninspiring functionality out of the box. Some aspects of Word could be made a lot better if you were to visit the customize section (in recent versions).
Scanned documents can quickly become hard to read and a pain to work with over time. Fortunately, you can easily convert your scanned documents into Word format with just a few simple clicks. This process is easy and takes little time. Keep reading to learn more about how to convert a scanned document to Word.