Microsoft Document Imaging OCR Guide

OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition, and is the process of converting written or printed text into a form that can be understood by a computer. Using OCR, your computer can take text from a scanned document and insert it into a text file, or Word document. There are a number of OCR products on the market, but if you already own Microsoft Office, you already own software capable of Optical Character Recognition, Microsoft Document Imaging OCR.

You can use Microsoft OCR to grab text from a scanned document and convert it into a usable Word document. Microsoft Office Document Imaging is able to perform OCR on TIFF files, so step one is to scan your documents. Scan each page in TIFF format. Next, you must load your documents into Microsoft Document Imaging OCR. First, click "Start." Then, click "All Programs," "Microsoft Office," "Microsoft Office Tools," and finally, "Microsoft Document Imaging."

In Microsoft OCR, click "File," then "Insert File." When asked for the file to be inserted, locate the scanned TIFF file(s) containing your document. If you have scanned each page of your document into a separate TIFF files, you will need to repeat this process for each TIFF file. After the first file is inserted, you will be asked whether you want to insert at the beginning, middle, or end of the document upon inserting each successive page. Make your choice and click "OK."

Once all the pages of your document have been inserted into Microsoft Document Imaging OCR, you are ready to start the OCR process. Click the "Send Text to Word" button. (Located at the top of the screen in the middle of the menu bar, and appears as a white page with an arrow pointing to a blue "W.") Press the button and continue.

A dialog box will ask whether you wish to insert all the pages, or just the ones that were selected. One again, make your choice and press "OK," and the text of your essay will be inserted into a Microsoft Word Document. You are now free to format, edit, and save your new word document. Since many computers today have Office included, the Microsoft Document Imaging OCR is certainly a valuable, if slightly hidden, gem. Stand alone OCR software could set you back a pretty penny and not be any better than that which is included with your Office software. Source: Documentimaginginc dot com, Louis Zhang

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