The text is locked inside an image: a screenshot, a video frame, a presentation or an application that won’t let you copy. Retyping it by hand takes ages and it’s easy to make mistakes. In this article: how to quickly copy text from your screen or a photo and paste it into Word, Excel or an email.
Why text in an image „can’t be copied”
There are no letters in an image – just coloured dots. To make the text copyable, the software first has to recognise it (OCR): turn the dots into characters and words. More on this in our article what is OCR.
The quickest way – ABBYY Screenshot Reader
ABBYY Screenshot Reader is a small program made precisely for this job. It works in any Windows application:
- Launch Screenshot Reader and select the area of the screen containing the text with your mouse.
- The program recognises the text instantly.
- Choose where to send it: to the clipboard, Word, Excel or a file.
A table on screen can be sent straight to Excel – with its rows and columns, not as a single block of text. The program is also handy for simply taking and saving screenshots.
When you need to recognise a photo or many pages
If you have a document photographed with a phone, a scanned PDF or dozens of pages, it’s more convenient to use ABBYY FineReader PDF. It recognises the entire document, preserves the layout (columns, tables, headings) and lets you edit the text. We described how to do this in our articles how to edit a scanned document and how to convert PDF to Word.
For accurate recognition
- Select only the text – without unnecessary pictures and frames.
- If the font is very small, zoom in on the screen before selecting.
- Take photos from directly above the page, in good lighting and without shadows.
Are free tools any good?
Sometimes – yes. However, online OCR services upload your image to someone else’s server, and many free tools struggle with accented characters (such as Lithuanian ą or ę) and with tables. Screenshot Reader does everything on your own computer, and a licence costs less than lunch.