We recently posted about how you can use Microsoft Word 2016 to edit PDF documents directly. But this Microsoft Word is limited when it comes to editing PDF files – it works great with text based PDF files, but not so much with scanned PDF files that basically contain full page scanned images of documents. In Microsoft Word there is nothing much you can do with these images embedded inside a scanned PDF file. However, if you could convert that scanned PDF document using OCR software into an editable text or Word file, then it could be edited easily. The free web app from Investintech that is able to do exactly just that – it can take any PDF file, perform OCR operations on it and finally produce editable Microsoft Word files. Here is how:
- Get a scanned PDF document ready. We are going to use a PDF file with one scanned page from Guy de Maupassant’s short story collection book – it looks like this:
- Visit Investintech’s online PDF to Word converter web app page at http://www.investintech.com/pdf-ocr.htm.
- Click on the Select File button and select any of the PDF files from your computer that you want to convert into Microsoft Word format.
- Type in your email address in the specified box and click on the Start button. You will see a confirmation box telling you that your files has been uploaded and it will be converted into a Word document within next 30 minutes.
- After 30 minutes have passed, check your inbox and you will see an email message from Invetintech with a link to download the converted Word file.
- This is OCR converted file so even images are turned into text. You can edit it in any Microsoft Word as you want. Since OCR is not perfect, you may have to edit the text here and there a little.
Verdict: Invetintech’s PDF to Word web app offers simple and easy conversion of scanned PDF files into OCR Microsoft Word documents that you can edit in Microsoft Word or compatible programs like LibreOffice.