I need help converting scanned text into an editable document. Crosspost from the Lounge:

[Dora]

Can I convert either a PDF or a TIF file into an MS Word document?

I have many pages of printed text I want to scan. I know that I can do this at home, scanning one page at a time, and use the OCR software that came with my HP all in one. But I don't want to do this one page at a time. I want to run my pages through the document feeder on the photocopier at the office, because it's so FAST. And if I do this, I can create either a PDF or a TIF file - but can I convert the PDF or TIF into simple text or MS Word?

:shrug:

Software I have to work with is MS Word, Acrobat v. 6, and InDesign.

Thank you in advance for your expertise!

(crossposted here http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=8862919&mesg_id=8862919)

[MyNameGoesHere]

1. Office 11 and higher

has OCR built in to it. Go to msoffice tools and look for document imaging. I believe it only handles .tif though.

[canetoad]

2. If you have the full Acrobat

and not just the reader, you should be able to export a pdf to Word, RTF, plain text etc. (File>Export...)
and have it open and edit in MS Word. Note, I have Acrobat 8, but I recall that 6 could also allow this.

Now the scanning....I really hear ya! I've tried the same thing on the office copier/scanner with not much luck. I'm sure with an amount of fiddling you could use a combination of the document feed and Adobe Acrobat to automate pdf creation from a number of pages, but I gave up before finding the Holy Grail.

Once again, this is Acrobat 8, but in File menu, Create PDF, select 'From Scanner'. Following the prompts, you can create OCR (searchable) multi-page pdfs directly into Acrobat. To some extent I guess it would depend on the copier you are using - it seems logical to be able to save pages as the copier scans them via page feed but I can only get ours (an oldish Sharp) to recognise scans made from the platen.

So good luck, and please share if you get it working!