How to Move Scanned Documents to Word for Editing

If you have ever retyped a paper or scanned document in Word, you have neglected features offered in the Microsoft Photo Editor and Microsoft Office Document Imaging tools, which are included in the Microsoft Office product. It’s likely that you installed the tools when you installed Microsoft Word. If not, you can add them using your Microsoft Office software CD. The Microsoft Office Document Imaging tool will convert scanned .tiff or .tif documents into text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and send it to Microsoft Word where you can edit it like any other text document.

Things You'll Need

• Microsoft Office Document Imaging
• Microsoft Photo Editor

Instructions

1. Open Microsoft Photo Editor. Click “File” and “Open.”

2. Select the scanned document file that you want to edit in Word. Click the “Open” button.

3. Click “File” and “Save as.” Choose “Tag Image File Format (*.tif) from the “Save as type” drop-down box. Click the “Save” button.

4. Click on the red “X” in the upper right corner to close Microsoft Photo Editor.

5. Open Microsoft Document Imaging. Click on “File” in the menu.

6. Select “Open.” Highlight the .tif or .tiff file that contains your scanned document. Click the “Open” button.

7. Click on “File” and “Send text to Word.” Click “OK” in the “Microsoft Office Document Imaging” warning window.

8. Click in the radial button for “Selected pages” or “All pages.” Click the “OK” button.

References

• Microsoft Office Online: Use Text or Pictures from an Online Fax or a Scanned Document

Resources

• Microsoft Support: Photo Editor is Removed When you Install Office 2003 or 2007