IT Help

Can you edit a scanned document? If so, how do you do it! I can cut and paste the text i need onto a word document bu cant seem to edit the text.

Any ideas?

What about this?

without being there i can't think properly but i don't think you can edit it unless you have adobe writer/editor

[Bri w]

Originally Posted by Tara

without being there i can't think properly but i don't think you can edit it unless you have adobe writer/editor

wot Tara sez

[phi-dan]

Depends on how you scan it and if you have the original or not. If it's scanned to a PDF file, then you will have the devil's own job as conversion back to Word frequently borks the formatting. If you have the original then you could scan it to an OCR package (some will even import and OCR from a PDF / JPG / etc) which then outputs to Word anyway. Omnipage is pretty good (other software titles are available, standard rates apply, calls from mobiles will cost an arm and a leg)

[ophic]

Originally Posted by phi-dan

Depends on how you scan it and if you have the original or not. If it's scanned to a PDF file, then you will have the devil's own job as conversion back to Word frequently borks the formatting. If you have the original then you could scan it to an OCR package (some will even import and OCR from a PDF / JPG / etc) which then outputs to Word anyway. Omnipage is pretty good (other software titles are available, standard rates apply, calls from mobiles will cost an arm and a leg)

Just to clarify, the reason you can't edit a scanned document directly is because it's an image - effectively a photograph taken of the document. It doesn't contain text information like a Word document does. You use OCR (optical character recognition) packages to convert an image into a document - it optically recognises each character and creates the corresponding text information. However my experience of these is that they don't work all that brilliantly. YMMV.

Scan document, Now open with PAINT, erase word(s), write what you want in it's place. Job done.
Did this on a scanned Bank account summary for my Bro. Then emailed it to him in Thailand, just so it looked liked he had loads of money in his account.

Ste.

[Viney]

Scanned docs...
PDF - You need a PDF editor and not all will work, i recomend Foxit (evaluation copies can be found)
Tiff - No
Gif - No
JPEG - No

[ophic]

Originally Posted by Viney

PDF - You need a PDF editor and not all will work, i recomend Foxit (evaluation copies can be found)

a PDF from a scan is usually just an image encapsulated in a PDF - ie no OCR has taken place. So this step still needs doing, even if you have a PDF editor.