Today’s post is all about scanning documents. You have to go through the everyday task of scanning paper documents and converting those scanned documents into electronic files. But we’re not here to talk about traditional ways of doing this, we’ll show you a few useful tips that can save your precious time and make it easier for you to convert scan to microsoft word document .
How to Convert a scan to Word Document or convert paper document to Word are some of the most searched queries that we see on the Internet. This is mainly due to the fact that large number of people in today’s day and age use scanners, which convert physical documents into digital copies. The vision of having a hard copy is simply not as practical as it used to be in the past generation. However, you may want to convert scan to word document or convert paper document to word for various reasons. That said, understanding how to perform this conversion is essential if you want clarity and precision in terms of the content you are trying to retrieve and read.
How to convert scan to word document: Let’s face it, when we are scanning things the images come in first and if you would like them to appear in a word document, you have to go through extra steps , which is something that most people don’t have time for. There are also times when you may want something printed and regular type of printers such as canon and hp don’t allow you to print scanned documents as they require the input in rtf or txt format.
When you get a piece of paper or books to scan and need to convert scan to word document format? Just use Scan2Word OCR software. Scan2Word OCR can help you convert scanned documents jpg, pdf and tiff files into plain text (word ) or formatted html. Unlike other scanner conversion software, it can deal with damaged pages, multiple-page scans, RGB images and multi-page tiff files. With its powerful image processing ability, Scan2Word can not only capture images from paper documents but also from PDF, JPEG and TIFF. In addition, it supports the famous scanning format TWAIN which brings a convenient way to capture images from any kind of scanner device.
Convert Scanned PDF To Word
When scanning a document, oftentimes, instead of containing text, the PDF contains an image of the scanned content. In order to work with the text, copy and paste, and use it, you can convert the scanned PDF to Word. Find out how to turn your scan into an editable Microsoft Word document.
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.
Converting an Image to a Word/Excel/PowerPoint File
By using ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap, you can convert a scanned image to an editable file as a Word file, Excel file, or PowerPoint file.
Only images with the document type [Documents] and a PDF file format, which are scanned with the ScanSnap can be converted.
If you take the contents in an image into consideration when selecting a format for the file to which the image is converted, considering the contents in the image, reproducibility of the image after it is converted becomes higher.
For details, refer to OCR Function of ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap.
Windows
HINT
- Even an image of a document scanned with the ScanSnap cannot be converted to a Word/Excel/PowerPoint file if a security setting other than the permissions password such as the document open password is set on the image.
- A file to which an image is converted is saved in the following file formats:
- Scan to Word: DOCX format (.docx)
- Scan to Excel: XLSX format (.xlsx)
- Scan to PowerPoint(R): PPTX format (.pptx)
- To view and check the converted Word/Excel/PowerPoint file, your user registration and license authentication for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint must be complete so that Word, Excel, and PowerPoint can be used.For the versions of the applications that are supported by ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap, refer to the ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap User’s Guide.
- Do not use this function while you are using Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. In addition, do not use Word, Excel, or PowerPoint while this function is being executed. Otherwise, a message such as “Call was rejected by callee” may appear and the conversion result may not be displayed.
- The settings for converting an image to a Word/Excel/PowerPoint file can be changed with ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap.To start up ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap, select [Scan to Word], [Scan to Excel], or [Scan to PowerPoint(R)] in the [Application list] under the [Application] tab of the preferences window, and click the [Set] button.For details about the settings, refer to the ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap User’s Guide.
- If you specify [Scan to Word], [Scan to Excel], or [Scan to PowerPoint(R)] for an application that you want to run in the settings for a profile, simply scanning a document can convert an image of the scanned document to a Word/Excel/PowerPoint file.
- Display the Main Window of ScanSnap Home.For details, refer to To Display the Main Window.
- In the Content Data Record List View, select a content data record with an image to be converted to a Word/Excel/PowerPoint file.If you convert multiple images in content data records to Word/Excel/PowerPoint files, select the content data records while holding down the [Ctrl] key or [Shift] key.
- Select a format of the files to which images are converted.From the menu that appears when you right-click the content data record, click [Send to] and select one of the following:
- Scan to Word
- Scan to Excel
- Scan to PowerPoint(R)
When the conversion is complete, Word, Excel, or PowerPoint is started and the conversion results are displayed.
How to Identify Scanned PDF and True PDF
Using Your Cursor
Open the PDF in your PDF reader and place your cursor over the text: if the cursor turns into “I-bar”, it means you are dealing with text; if it turns into “cross-hairs”, it shows the presence of an object instead of text.
Selecting The Text (Highlighting)
Text in normal PDF can be selected so you can just use your cursor and keyboard to select them, making them highlighted; if you can’t select/highlight the text, it means that you are facing an object instead of text – you can only select an area of image.
Zooming In
Enlarge the PDF and you will find that scanned PDF/image PDF looks blurry and pixelated; in normal PDF, the text will look the same crispy even when you enlarge them to the size of your computer screen.
Software Alert
Usually, Adobe Acrobat will prompt a window to warn you if you are trying to open a scanned PDF or image PDF.
Document Properties
Unlike a normal PDF, There isn’t any fonts information in document properties if you open a scanned PDF/image PDF with any PDF reader.
How to Convert Scanned PDF to Word
How can you get the text out if you see them in a scanned PDF/image PDF? Is there a smarter way than inefficient retyping to do that? We all know that normal PDF converters can’t help you out under this situation, not without OCR ability. OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition, which is a technology that enables you to convert images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text that is searchable and editable.
Our PDF converter software, Free OCR to Word, is the best OCR software you can get around to Convert Scanned PDF to Word, which is actually free and safe to use. With the OCR technology integrated, it can extract text from scanned PDF/image PDF with accuracy up to 98%. Now let’s find out how it works to convert scanned PDF to Word.
1
To convert scanned PDF to Word, download and install Free OCR to Word to your Windows computer first. It works perfectly with Windows 10, 8, 7 and XP.
2
Launch the program and click the “Open” button to input your scanned PDF/image PDF (you can also input and image file or use the “Scan” button to launch your scanner program to scan a hardcopy into Free OCR to Word).
3
Choose the area to extract the text. We suggest you zoom in as much as possible, which can increase the accuracy of the result. If the PDF is not in the upright position, use the rotate buttons to set things right.
4
Click “OCR” and the text within the selected area will be analyzed and extracted to the text panel on the right. There you can do some proofreading and editing work or you can just click “Export Text into Microsoft Word” and the program will open your Word and create a new page and automatically paste the extracted text into it. Now you can revise the text conveniently and save them to a Word document as usual. That’s how to convert Scanned PDF to Word.
Different Types of PDF
True PDF
True PDF files (Digitally Created PDF), which can include both text and images, are digitally created via software like Word, Excel or virtual a printer application. Users can search the textual contents in a true PDF and select/edit/delete them – quite similar to the way you make changes to a Word document or other editable format files. The images in a true PDF can be resized/moved/deleted as well.
Scanned PDF
Scanned PDF files (Image-only PDF) is something different. When you scan a printed document with a scanner to a PDF, or convert images of various formats into a PDF, what you get is “image-only” PDF with locked snapshot-like images instead of underlying text layer. Scanned PDF is not searchable and the text within can’t be selected, edited or marked.
What is OCR?
OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition but let’s put it in simpler terms.
Basically, OCR technology takes scanned paper documents, PDF files, or even images and turns them into editable and searchable documents. Done in a matter of seconds, this data conversion creates a copy that looks exactly like original document.
This is a common practice used when converting scanned PDFs to Word Documents, digitizing old files, processing checks, or even sorting mail.
Let’s say you have a paper document – maybe a product brochure or signed contract – simply scanning this document isn’t going to make it an editable document. All a scanner does is create an image of the document.
OCR software extracts information or edits a document. In simple terms, the software recognizes letters from an image and then transforms those to words and sentences.
Conclusions
Scanning paper documents is quite normal in contemporary life. You’ve likely scanned many documents because you’re using a digital scanner or you’re borrowing one from your school or your office (if you work at an office). Sometimes, though, scan results are not too good, but this doesn’t mean that we’ll lose the ability to read our scans. We can use OCR processing to convert scan documents to text files (like PDF) and edit them with Word.
Converting a scan to word document is basically the act of making a scanned word document. This process could be necessary for reasons like storage, security, or ease of access.