In the process of working with a word processor Word, users sometimes need to process not only the text typed by them (or other people), but also edit scanned fragments. For example, in order not to manually reprint any text, letter or anything else scanned and received in this form. Previously, while the recognition systems were not running, the so-called OCR, I had to do such tedious work. Today, you can simply use not only numerous third-party programs, but also the built-in Windows tools and, in particular, Microsoft Office. It is even more convenient, because you do not need to keep the installed software on hand, to be tied to one computer, etc. And in the modern world it means a lot.
So, there is a scanned text and the task to insert it into your own document so that after this fragment can be edited. There are two ways; consider both.
First way
It is to use the built-in Microsoft Word. The fact is that if you insert a scanned fragment without additional actions, it will be just a picture. Its main text will flow around, and you can only edit size and transparency. This is especially annoying when you need to alter only a couple of lines. But if you insert this scanned fragment as a Microsoft Image Viewer object into the Word, then, in fact, it will be inserted as normal, editable text. To do this, you need to make sure that the file has a .tiff extension, and if not, use Paint by opening it and overwriting it in the correct format. After that, a special component of the Microsoft Office platform comes into play, which we mentioned just above. You should open it in the main menu. If not, then you have to dig into the control panel.
Find the “Add or Remove Programs” item in it, find the Office list that opens and go to the selection of components. Among them, you will find the Image Viewer we need to complete the task. After installation, it will appear in the main menu.
So, after opening it, drag'n'drop or through the window menu, open the scanned file in this program. You will need to wait a couple of minutes, as the progress bar appears on the screen, displaying the recognition progress. Upon completion of the process, in fact, a window will open with the recognized text. You can copy it to the Word for further editing. Of course, you should take into account that the recognition of text that is distorted by scanning may not be ideal, so it is worthwhile to carry out the so-called “proof reading”, that is, edit it, correcting incorrectly recognized characters. The situation is much worse with handwritten text, the likelihood that it can be edited is strongly correlated with the color of paper and ink, the quality of scanning and, of course, legibility of handwriting. But such work is rarely carried out with handwritten text, usually it is all about printed.
Second way
Generally speaking, the second method is the same as the first one, with the only difference being that third-party software is used first to enable text recognition and editing, and then Word. An installed program will be required. It may even work better than a solution from Microsoft, since such programs are developed and designed specifically for this task. The authors promise almost 100% accuracy in working with printed text and slightly more modest figures when it comes to handwritten. But in order to separate marketing tricks from the true state of things, you will have to step on the path of empirical verification.
In practice, it turns out that the gap is not so great. Yes, it may seem convenient to someone that you do not need to enable text editing through the Microsoft Image Viewer link - Microsoft Word, but you’ll have to use another bundle of programs, and character recognition accuracy will be consistently high for printed documents. Therefore, the reasons to pay more for one of these programs, when there is a solution built into Office, are very vague. Another thing, if you are dealing with special cases. For example, you have a lot of documents scanned in poor quality that you need to digitize and prepare for editing mode. Then highly specialized software, configured to work with noise and distortion in such images, of course, will be predictably better. He will more accurately process the sheet with the characters, more correctly recognize them and transfer them to Word for further work. But there are not so many such cases and, as a rule, an ordinary user does not encounter them. Therefore, for typical tasks, this path is almost never used.
Afterword
Office suite is a wide range of tools for solving a wide variety of tasks. Each of its programs has its own functionality, and they complement each other when performing office work. In particular, to edit scanned documents in Word, a recognition program will be required, and it is presented in the package. Such an “All-in-One” structure is very convenient, since you don’t have to think about where to find and how to install third-party software, you don’t need to understand the features of its interface: there are solutions made in the same style. Therefore, Office has been and remains the de facto standard for office work.
As for the ability to insert an image directly into Word and edit it directly from there, so far this mode is not supported. However, given the tendency to integrate programs inside the package and go online (we mean Office365), we should expect this soon. Now you will need to install the required component (if it has not yet been installed) and work exactly like this.