Has it ever happened to you that, for example, business partners sent some kind of documentation or a draft cooperation agreement in the form of a file in a graphic format (an ordinary picture or a PDF document)? Apparently, if not all, then very many have encountered this. But the document you sometimes need to urgently change, and most often it relates to editing the text part, which may be contained in the source file. How to recognize text from a picture in order to spend a minimum of time on it and to avoid the possible occurrence of all kinds of errors and typos? This and much more will be discussed later. Today, there are many ways to “pull” text from files of graphic types or universal PDF format, however, when considering some of them, we will proceed from the most interesting, simple and understandable methods for any user.
How to recognize text from a picture in Word?
You should start with one of the simplest methods that will suit all users without exception. If we are talking about “pulling out” text from a PDF document, and then editing it and saving it in the “native” format of the Word text editor, you don’t have to go far, because all the latest versions of this application, starting with the 2010 Office releases, they support working with PDF files and allow them to be edited just as simple as if it were the most ordinary Word document.
In order to recognize the text from a PDF image in Word, which, if anyone does not know, refers specifically to graphic file types, it is enough to set the document to open, and select the PDF format in the file type. After that, the text can be edited and saved again in the form of a “native” editor format, selecting the desired type in the same field (for example, DOC or DOCX).
Additional Tools for Office 2003
If the problem is how to recognize the text from the image in the editor, which is part of the office suite, say, 2003, in which the PDF format is not supported, then in this case there is nothing complicated.
In addition to the text editor itself, you can additionally install a tool in the form of an integrable Word extension called File Format Converters, which will add features to the editor in that it can work with PDF files and with documents of updated formats like DOCX.
How to recognize text from a picture in PDF?
Another way to extract text directly from a graphic object in PDF format is to use any of the well-known editors designed to work with such documents. One of the most versatile and practical applications can be called the notorious Reader program from Adobe. Please note that in this case we are talking about the Reader application, and not about the similar Acrobat viewer, which supports only reading documents (viewing without the possibility of editing).
In the program itself, you just need to select the desired piece of text, copy it to the clipboard, and then paste it into a Word document and save it in the desired final format.
Using the OneNote App
If you understand the intricacies of how to recognize text from a picture without using the above applications, you can advise you to use another unique applet that is part of the latest modifications and assemblies of the office suites themselves, called OneNote, which many users mostly forget about the capabilities of, or don’t know at all. For the convenience of the program, you only need to create an empty document using the insert menu, place an image with text from a graphic file (any format) in it, and then configure the recognition language.
After that, it remains only to copy the text to the clipboard, for which the special item “Copy text from the image” is used, after which it can be pasted from the clipboard into any other program.
Note: if the questions relate to how to recognize Chinese text or content presented in any other language unsupported for display, you will need to install an additional language pack by downloading it, for example, from an official Microsoft source and the Internet.
ABBYY Finereader Recognition System
Naturally, if it is exclusively about how to recognize text from a picture in graphic formats, it is best to use specialized OCR systems for this. One of the most powerful and popular is the ABBYY Finereader program, as well as its online counterpart in the form of an official Internet portal.
This application works like a virtual scanner, in which you just need to specify the direction of recognition, and sometimes you may need to specify the language of the source document (this applies to outdated versions of the package). When the text scan on the same printed sheet or image file is completed, it will be automatically redirected, for example, to Word or to any other office editor.
Format converters
So far they have been the simplest applications that allow you to recognize text from a picture. Programs to perform such actions include another category of software called converters. They are interesting in that it is not necessary to perform recognition of the text content of the graphic file in them. The bottom line is to convert the original graphic format to the selected text, after which the converted file can also be opened in the desired editor. In addition, very often it is such applications that are most effective when you need to process several dozens of documents of the same type. This is called batch mode. As for the programs themselves, you can find a huge number of them on the same Internet.
Among the most popular applications are utilities for converting PDF files to any other formats, PDF or JPG to Word converters, universal converters of any type of graphic to text files, etc.
Online Services: Nuances of Use and Possible Limitations
Finally, if none of the proposed solutions suits you, manual conversion is just too lazy or not, please, there are a lot of resources on the Internet where all these operations will be performed without your direct participation. You only need to download the source graphic file, wait for the text to be extracted and download the finished text file to your own computer (or even just copy the text from the window with the result). True, the inconvenience of some of these services consists only in the fact that restrictions on the number of files simultaneously downloaded for processing and limits regarding their size can often be set, not to mention the fact that some services are by no means free. But many of these resources determine the language used in the text automatically, which saves you from additional unnecessary translation actions.