convert paper document to word for free

donnajunkie

 i have a scanner so i understand the first part of converting a paper document is to scan it onto my pc. however i want to convert it to a word document so that i can use it  as a whole but change the odd detail as and when i need to. i dont really want to pay for software. so is there a way to do it for free? the resulting document would need to be emailable and readable by the recipient.

giraffe69

Most cheap scanners will scan and produce a pdf. You can open that in Word but be aware that if the scan is not good there may be some correction/editing to do. 

Neil_Jones

OCR - Optical Character Recognition - could be an option. https://www.simpleocr.com/ocr-freeware/ but the success of this depends on the quality of the paper copy already.  If its already faded or been half-eaten by the dog, nothing will salvage it.

Of course easiest solution is just to type it all out yourself manually.

WaywardDriver

Scan to pdf, open in Adobe Reader, Ctrl/A to select all text, Ctrl/C to copy, then in Word Ctrl/V to paste. 

Chino

WaywardDriver said:

Scan to pdf, open in Adobe Reader, Ctrl/A to select all text, Ctrl/C to copy, then in Word Ctrl/V to paste. 

Does Adobe Reader automatically do OCR?
Without that, all the OP will be doing will be pasting images of their document's pages into Word. The OP wanted to be able to "change the odd detail as and when i need to".

wongataa

Chino said:

WaywardDriver said:

Scan to pdf, open in Adobe Reader, Ctrl/A to select all text, Ctrl/C to copy, then in Word Ctrl/V to paste. 

Does Adobe Reader automatically do OCR?
Without that, all the OP will be doing will be pasting images of their document's pages into Word. The OP wanted to be able to "change the odd detail as and when i need to".

No it doesn't.  The scanning software would have to do the OCR for this to work.

Norman_Castle

Google Drive

Google Drive, which is integrated with Google Docs, is a fantastic free online service provided by Google that supports multiple document formats including PDF files. To convert a PDF to text using Google Docs, follow the steps below.

Tip

For any PDF containing pages that need to be rotated, we suggest using Online OCR instead of Google Drive since it automatically rotate all pages.

1. Open Google Docs.
2. In Google Docs, click the Settings icon in the top-right corner (shown below) and click Upload settings and then make sure Convert text from uploaded PDF and image files is checked.

3. After checking the settings above, any PDF file you upload to Google Docs is automatically converted to text.

https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000124.htm

WaywardDriver

Chino said:

WaywardDriver said:

Scan to pdf, open in Adobe Reader, Ctrl/A to select all text, Ctrl/C to copy, then in Word Ctrl/V to paste. 

Does Adobe Reader automatically do OCR?
Without that, all the OP will be doing will be pasting images of their document's pages into Word. The OP wanted to be able to "change the odd detail as and when i need to".

Tried on a couple of pdf's, an application form and an insurance policy. Both worked although images were ignored and formatting was lost but text was editable in Word. Can't say for certain about all pdf's but if content mainly text should work OK.  

alanclarke

https://www.onlineocr.net/ extract text from scanned PDF and images (JPG, BMP, TIFF, GIF) and convert into editable Word, Excel and Text output formats

wongataa

WaywardDriver said:

Chino said:

WaywardDriver said:

Scan to pdf, open in Adobe Reader, Ctrl/A to select all text, Ctrl/C to copy, then in Word Ctrl/V to paste. 

Does Adobe Reader automatically do OCR?
Without that, all the OP will be doing will be pasting images of their document's pages into Word. The OP wanted to be able to "change the odd detail as and when i need to".

Tried on a couple of pdf's, an application form and an insurance policy. Both worked although images were ignored and formatting was lost but text was editable in Word. Can't say for certain about all pdf's but if content mainly text should work OK.  

In those cases the text is stored as text in the PDF.  If you scan a document to a PDF you just get a picture of the document in a PDF file - no text to copy, unless the scanner software can do OCR and do the conversion from image to text.  Adobe Reader does not do the conversion.

WaywardDriver

wongataa said:

WaywardDriver said:

Chino said:

WaywardDriver said:

Scan to pdf, open in Adobe Reader, Ctrl/A to select all text, Ctrl/C to copy, then in Word Ctrl/V to paste. 

Does Adobe Reader automatically do OCR?
Without that, all the OP will be doing will be pasting images of their document's pages into Word. The OP wanted to be able to "change the odd detail as and when i need to".

Tried on a couple of pdf's, an application form and an insurance policy. Both worked although images were ignored and formatting was lost but text was editable in Word. Can't say for certain about all pdf's but if content mainly text should work OK.  

In those cases the text is stored as text in the PDF.  If you scan a document to a PDF you just get a picture of the document in a PDF file - no text to copy, unless the scanner software can do OCR and do the conversion from image to text.  Adobe Reader does not do the conversion.

You're correct. I tried on existing pdf's and overlooked the scanning part so my suggestion won't work.