How do I scan a document so I can edit the text in a word processing program?

• You can scan a document and convert the text into data that you can edit with a word processing program using a process called OCR (Optical Character Recognition). To scan and use OCR, you need to use an OCR program.

  OCR software cannot recognize handwritten characters, and certain types of documents or text may be difficult for OCR software to recognize, such as:

  • Items that have been copied from other copies
  • Faxes
  • Text with tightly spaced characters
  • Text that is in tables or underlined
  • Cursive or italic fonts and font sizes less than 8 points