How to Scan a Document into Word

Scanning makes me happy. And why not? You keep on squandering time over saving important information of a hard-copy by typing it word to word, while the ones smart enough get away by scanning it with the help of Microsoft Office Imaging Tools. For a moment, it might occur to you how lazy you've been becoming as days pass by, and how bad is it doing to your already botched up typing speed. But you know, when you see your scanner scanning every single word of your document, and you save great amount of time, you'll all but blaspheme technology! So, scanning a document into Word, and be able to edit every word of it without compromising on the quality might seem to be an easy way out, but it isn't really, for it involves the use of a software program that recognizes the words on your document, thus, enabling you to edit them in Word. Let's have a look on a method.

Scanning a Document into MS Word 2007

Okay, you're ready with your computer on, Microsoft Office 2007 downloaded, and your scanner up-to-date. But wait, do you have OCR? No? That's the software program I was talking about. OCR or Optical Character Recognition recognizes words on your document, thereby, translating them into text that is compatible with MS Word. These days, most scanners have OCR already installed, but just in case you do not own one, it's better to fetch it.

Now, get the hard-copy you want to scan, and place it onto the image scanner. Make sure the text you want to scan faces the feeder. When you're done scanning, open the image, and save it. For saving, go to File, and click on Save As. Name the image.

After you're done naming the image, Click on the Start menu, and select Microsoft Office Tools, followed by Microsoft Office Document Imaging. Here, you have to go to File, and click on Open, to open your scanned document. When the document is opened, click on the Tools tab, and select Send Text to Word. Click OK for whatever it pops up thereafter. It'll hardly take a couple of minutes to unlock the text, and when it's done processing, Microsoft Word will provide to you the document ready to be edited, whatever way you please.

Did you know that the same process is applicable to Microsoft Excel too? Using the above steps, you could scan document into Excel, and start editing. However, your scanner should have OCR in it, for it's a must.

Scanning a Document into Open Office

You know, Open Office Org or Ooo has its own set of features, one of which is the inability to recognize the document that was designed for MS word! The method to scan document into Open Office is, somewhat, the same, however, you have to install a scanning software, Lexmark Productivity Suite in most cases, in order to scan a document. It installs the business tools that are required for scanning. In the program list of the Productivity Suite, you need to add Open Office Writer, select it, and then, click on Scan Document. Wait for a few minutes, while it imports the document into Writer. Yes, the margins and paragraphs might not come out as the same, but the software will, undoubtedly, fetch you the desired results.

In this quest, the last piece of advice would be to share your experience with others who've experienced similar problems. Who knows, you might just learn something new with reference to document scanning into Word?