You need to change one amount in a contract, correct a surname on a certificate or update an old manual – but all you have is a scanned document. You click on the text and nothing happens. That’s because a scan is a photo of paper: to the computer there are no letters in it, just dots. We explain how this works in more detail in our article what is OCR.
The first step is always the same – text recognition
To make scanned text editable, the software first has to recognise it (OCR) – turn the dots into characters, words and lines. ABBYY FineReader PDF does this automatically as soon as you open a scan: it recognises text in 198 languages, Lithuanian among them, and preserves the page layout – columns, tables, headings.
Then choose one of three methods, depending on how much text you need to change.
Method 1. Correct a few words directly in the PDF
Ideal when you need to change a date, an amount, a surname or a single sentence. Open the scan in FineReader PDF and switch to editing mode. The program recognises the text in the background, and you can edit it almost as you would in a Word document: delete, type something new, change a line. The font is matched as closely as possible to the original, and the rest of the page stays unchanged.
Important: only edit documents you are entitled to change – your own draft contracts, internal documents, archive copies. Altering signed documents is a different matter altogether.
Method 2. Convert to Word when there’s a lot to change
If a large part of the document needs rewriting or you want to use it as a template, it’s more convenient to convert it into an editable Word file. Tables become real tables rather than images, and lists become lists. After conversion, it’s worth checking the tricky elements: merged cells, footnotes and text overlaid on a background. More on this in our article how to convert PDF to Word.
Method 3. A photo of a document taken with your phone
No scanner? FineReader also opens photos (JPG, PNG, TIFF), so a page photographed with a phone can be recognised and edited in the same way. You’ll get a good result if:
- the page is photographed straight from above, not at an angle;
- the lighting is even, with no shadow from the phone or your hand;
- the whole page is in the frame and isn’t folded.
Quality determines the result
Most recognition errors are caused not by the software but by the scan. A few tips that save the most time:
- scan at 300 dpi – a lower resolution is too low for small print, and a higher one only makes the file bigger;
- for text documents, choose greyscale or colour mode rather than pure black and white – that way thin strokes of the letters don’t disappear;
- the software straightens a skewed page by itself, but a flattened sheet of paper always gives a better result.
Are free online tools any good?
For a single unimportant page – yes. However, most free online OCR services limit the number of pages, handle tables poorly and, most importantly, upload your file to someone else’s server. For contracts, invoices and documents containing personal data, that’s a risk best avoided. FineReader PDF processes documents on your own computer.
Which FineReader edition to choose
To edit scanned documents and convert them to Word, ABBYY FineReader PDF Standard (Windows) is enough. The Corporate edition also compares documents in different formats and automatically processes files from a watched folder. For Mac computers there is FineReader PDF for Mac. The differences between all editions are in the comparison table.