If you have scanned documents, such as a form, contract or other document that you need to turn into a Word document, you can use the scanning feature of Microsoft Word. This allows you to scan multiple pages in both color and black and white, if necessary. With the scanning feature, you can convert these scanned documents into editable text.
Scanned PDF is great. But if you wanted to edit these documents the scanned PDF is no longer good since it can’t be edited. In this tutorial we will show you How to turn Scanned PDF into Word Document, a scanned PDF-Word converter, you can use OpenOffice.org or any other word processor, so that you can edit your document with new software.
Many PDF files are in the form of scanned documents. These files can be impossible to read on a computer, even if you have a PDF reader installed. However, there are ways to edit these scanned PDFs and make them more readable.
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.
You’ve probably imagined converting a scanned PDF file to DOC format for editing, but wondered about whether this was possible. Or maybe you’ve even tried to use your word processor’s “convert” function and were left with a near uneditable file.
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 nutshellConvert My PDF
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.
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.
- 2Open 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.
- 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.
Method2Converting a Scanned Image
- 1Open the New OCR site. Go to http://www.newocr.com/ in your computer’s web browser.https://b986baaf3896d58101d9e6223e7c49da.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
- 2Click Choose file. It’s a grey button at the top of the page. Doing so prompts a File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac) window to open.
- 3Select the scanned file. In the file browser, navigate to the scanned image file of your document, then click the file.
- 4Click Open. It’s in the bottom-right corner of the window. Doing so will prompt the file to upload to the website.
- 5Click Upload + OCR. You’ll find this button near the bottom of the visible page. New OCR will begin extracting the readable text from your scanned image.
- 6Scroll down and click Download. This link is in the lower-left side of the page, just above the box containing the document’s text. A drop-down menu will appear.
- 7Click Microsoft Word (DOC). It’s in the Download drop-down menu. This will prompt a Microsoft Word version of the scanned file to download onto your computer.
- 8Open the document. Once the file is done downloading, you can double-click it to open it in Microsoft Word. Your scanned image is now a Microsoft Word document.
- You may have to click Enable Editing at the top of the page as the document might be locked by default.
- 9Clean 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.
Method3Scanning a Document into a Word File
- 1Open Office Lens. Tap the Office Lens app icon, which resembles a red and white app with a camera iris and the letter “L” in the center of the icon.
- If you don’t have Office Lens installed, you can download it from the Google Play Store for Android or from the App Store on iPhone.
- 2Allow Office Lens access to your phone. If this is your first time opening Office Lens, tap Allow or OK when prompted to allow Office Lens to access your phone’s files.
- 3Tap DOCUMENT. It’s a tab at the bottom of the screen.
- 4Point your phone’s camera at a document. Position the document that you want to scan inside the camera’s view.
- Make sure you document is well lit so the camera can pick up as much detail as possible.
- 5Tap the “Capture” button. It’s a red circle at the bottom of the screen. This will take a photo of the document’s page.
- 6Tap . It’s in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
- You can scan more pages by tapping the camera with the plus icon at the bottom of the screen.
- 7Tap Word. You’ll find this option in the “SAVE TO” section of the “Export To” page.
- On Android, tap the box next to Word and then tap SAVE at the bottom of the screen.
- 8Sign into your Microsoft account. If you haven’t already, enter your Microsoft account email address and password. Once signed in, your Word document will be uploaded to your OneDrive account.
- This must be the account that you use to log into Microsoft Word as well.
- 9Open Word on your computer. It’s the blue app with a white document and the letter “W” in the icon.
- 10Click Open Other Documents. It’s on the left side of the window below the “Recent” section.
- On Mac, simply click the folder icon that says Open on the left-hand side of the window.
- 11Click OneDrive – Personal. It’s at the top of the window. This will open your OneDrive folder.
- If you don’t see the OneDrive option, click + Add a Place, then click OneDrive and sign in with your Microsoft account.
- 12Go to the Office Lens folder. Click on the “Documents” folder, then click the “Office Lens” folder. This is on the right pane of the window.
- 13Double-click your Word document. This opens the Word document you scanned using Office Lens in Microsoft Word.
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.
Conclusion
Convert scanned PDF to editable Word, Excel and Images files is a professional Service,which is provided by most of the experienced and skilled companies. Converting pdf documents to editable word files let users view, print, search and edit files without the original application.
Want to convert a pdf into word? Converting PDF files to Word Format is also very convenient in reducing your work and simplifying the whole conversion process. It saves you both time and money.