How to Edit Documents

How to Edit Documents – So you just received a printed copy of a Word document, and you would like to edit it. That’s all good, but unfortunately, you don’t have the original hard copy of the document from which the print-out came. How on earth do you edit it? Is there some kind of scan editor you can, perhaps, use to scan the document and then edit it? It all seems like the kind of high-tech stuff that requires you to make some pretty expensive purchases as you put together the machines you need to edit a simple document. Obviously, that won’t make any business sense. If only there were a simpler way to do it… But wait, there is!

Optical character recognition, or OCR, is a widespread technology that allows you to scan documents and turn them into editable soft copy documents that you can then easily edit. Plenty of software makers offer OCR, such as Adobe OCR. Microsoft is one of those software makers.

If you have a printed copy of a document and would like to be able to edit it, you can do it using Word. First, scan the copy, and then use Microsoft OneNote to turn it into an editable document and send it to Microsoft Word. Microsoft OneNote is a note-taking and planning software that comes as part of the Microsoft Office suite. It has the ability to perform OCR on a wide range of documents, including PDF OCR.

Provided you scanned the document properly, Microsoft OneNote will capture any images and text in the document and send them to Word, in which you can easily edit them. All this is a simple process that you can do in a few minutes.

Method 1 of 2:Using the New OCR Website

1. Scan your document as a PDF. This is important, as many text converters don’t recognize text in pictures as well as they do in PDF files.
   • If possible, scan your document using black-and-white settings rather than color settings. This makes it easier for text-editing programs to recognize the characters.
2. Open the New OCR website. Go to http://www.newocr.com/ in your browser. You can convert scanned documents into editable plain-text documents from here.
3. Click Choose file. It’s a grey button at the top of the page. Doing so will open a File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac) window.
4. Select your scanned PDF. Click the scanned PDF file to do so.
   • You may first have to click the scanned PDF file’s location folder on the left side of the window.
5. Click Open. It’s in the bottom-right corner of the window. Doing so will upload your PDF to the website.
6. Click Upload + OCR. This button is near the bottom of the page. Your uploaded PDF will be converted into text.
7. Scroll down and click Download. It’s on the left side of the page. Clicking it prompts a drop-down menu.
8. Click Microsoft Word (DOC). This option is in the drop-down menu. Doing so will prompt a Microsoft Word version of your uploaded PDF to download onto your computer.
   • If you don’t have Microsoft Word installed on your computer, you can download a .txt version by clicking Plain text (TXT) in the resulting drop-down menu. You can then edit the document using Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac).
9. Edit the PDF’s Word version. Double-click the downloaded Word document to open it in Microsoft Word, then edit any text in the PDF that’s readable.
   • Some text in the PDF will be impossible to edit based on translation errors.
   • You may have to click Enable Editing at the top of the Word window before you can edit the text.
10. Save the Word document as a PDF. To do so:
    • Windows – Click File, click Save As, click the “Word Document” drop-down box, click PDF, and click Save.
    • Mac – Click File, click Save As, enter a name, click the “Format” box, click PDF, and click Save.

Method 2: Using the Online OCR Website

1. Scan your document as a PDF. This is important, as many text converters don’t recognize text in pictures as well as they do in PDF files.
   • If possible, scan your document using black-and-white settings rather than color settings. This makes it easier for text-editing programs to recognize individual characters.
2. Open the Online OCR website. Go to https://www.onlineocr.net/ in your browser. This site allows you to edit your PDF’s text while still maintaining the visual formatting of the PDF, though you can only convert 50 total pages for free.
3. Click SIGN UP. It’s in the upper-right side of the page. Doing so takes you to the account creation page.
4. Create an account. Creating an account on the Online OCR site is free, and it will allow you to edit multiple PDF pages at once. To create your account, enter the following details:
   • Username – Type your preferred username into the “Username” text field.
   • Password – Type your preferred password into the “Password” and “Confirm password” text fields.
   • Email – Type your email address into the “E-Mail” text field.
   • Captcha – Type the code that’s in the code box into the “Enter Captcha code” text field.
5. Click Sign Up. It’s a green button at the bottom of the page. Doing so will create your Online OCR account.
6. Log into your account. Click LOGIN in the top-right corner of the page, enter your username and password, and click the green Log in button. This will take you to the PDF converter page.
7. Select a language. Click the language of your PDF on the left side of the page.
   • For example, if your PDF is in English, you’d click ENGLISH on the left side of the page.
8. Check the “Microsoft Word” box. It’s in the middle of the page.
9. Check the “All Pages” box. You’ll find this to the right of the “Microsoft Word” section.
10. Click Select file…. It’s a blue button in the middle of the page. A window will open.
11. Select your scanned PDF. Click the scanned PDF file to do so.
    • You may first have to click the scanned PDF file’s location folder on the left side of the window.
12. Click Open. This is in the bottom-right corner of the window. Doing so will begin uploading your document to the website. Once the progress bar to the right of Select file… reaches 100%, you can continue.
13. Click CONVERT. It’s at the bottom of the page. This will take you to the converted file’s page once Online OCR finishes converting your uploaded PDF into an editable Word document.
14. Click your document’s name. You’ll see the document’s name appear as a blue link at the bottom of the page. Clicking it will download the document onto your computer.
15. Edit the PDF’s Word version. Double-click the downloaded Word document to open it in Microsoft Word, then edit any text in the PDF that’s readable.
    • Some text in the PDF will be impossible to edit based on translation errors.
    • You may have to click Enable Editing at the top of the Word window before you can edit the text.
16. Save the Word document as a PDF. To do so:
    • Windows – Click File, click Save As, click the “Word Document” drop-down box, click PDF, and click Save.
    • Mac – Click File, click Save As, enter a name, click the “Format” box, click PDF, and click Save.

Conclusion

Scanning one of your business documents generally leads to it being saved as an image file. Though this allows you to save a scanned file for later viewing, it doesn’t allow you to actually edit that document on your computer.