Question about using Microsoft Word

[steeljack]

anyone got any idea about how I can "activate" a document I have scaned and saved to "Microsoft Word " to accept type in the blank spaces .
Thanks

[entwisi]

I would guess that what you have done is embedded an image rather than actual text. to get the text into a doc from a scan you need to use Optical Character Recognition (OCR).

If its an image then you can't edit it in word. depending on what you are trying to do if its just an odd word you may be able to edit it in an image editor and add text that way. e.g. if its a form and you just want to add your name etc.

If you want to do 'proper editing then OCR is the only way.

Most scanners come with soem freeware to do this, you may have not installed it.

If you haven't, Google manage teh following project which should do what you want.

tesseract-ocr - Google Code

I would say its often not 'perfect' and you may have to do some tweaking.

[steeljack]

thanks, will check out the OCR feature ,

[K.S.H]

Hope its a good clean sheet your scanning, any marks or creases will produce some weird results, often quicker starting from scratch

[Studio25]

"Insert" "Picture" "From file..."
Navigate to your scan.
Click it, then drag the bounding handles 'til it fills the page.

Right click it, select "Format picture". Select the "Layout" tab then click "Behind text"

Then you can type over the scan.

[Retlaw]

Originally Posted by Studio25

"Insert" "Picture" "From file..."
Navigate to your scan.
Click it, then drag the bounding handles 'til it fills the page.

Right click it, select "Format picture". Select the "Layout" tab then click "Behind text"

Then you can type over the scan.

Just tried all that, just one thing how the eck do you get the cursor to start exactly where you want it to be.

Retlaw.

[Neil]

you could add text boxes and then type in those. It might work.

[entwisi]

word doesn't allow free flow text, you need to space it out with tabs, paragraph formatting ( space before/after/indents etc)

its not a pretty or easy job either way and depends on how much text you want to add.

[Studio25]

Originally Posted by Retlaw

Just tried all that, just one thing how the eck do you get the cursor to start exactly where you want it to be.

Same as you would if you were doing it on a typewriter

Just press {Enter** 'til your cursor is on the right line (ish) then {Tab** or {Space** until you get to the point on that line where you want to type.

If it's too high or too low (and just pressing {Enter** or {Del** to add or remove a carriage return isn't quite working out right) then select one of the earlier carriage returns and use {Ctrl**{Shift****,** or {Ctrl**{Shift****.** to adjust its position. It helps if you've already typed a bit of what's going in the box so you can get it positioned just right.