How to Scan and Edit a Document for Free [Complete Guide]

In need of editing a scanned document PDF or Microsoft Word? Then you’ve come to the right place. From scanning paper or printout documents, to editing scanned documents easily, you’ll find detailed and illustrated tutorials here.

In this post, I’ll step by step show you how to scan a paper document, how to scan a print to document, how to edit a scanned document online, and how to edit a scanned document with Microsoft Word. The introduced methods are free and easy, now let’s get started.

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How to Scan a Printed Document to Editable Word

In some cases, you do have a digital document but it’s a printed copy from other people instead of the original hard one. And in this part, you’ll learn how to scan a printed document into an editable Microsoft Word document with the practical technology OCR (Optical character recognition), which intrinsically converts image text to editable text.

To OCR a printed document for free, we’ll be using the free online OCR service OnlineOCR.

1. Navigate to the OnlineOCR website.
2. Hit the SELECT FILE button to import the printout.
3. Select the scanning language and output format (Microsoft Word Docx).
4. Hit the convert button to start the OCR.
5. When the file is ready, hit the Download Output File button below to download the editable Word document.

How to Scan a Paper Document to Digital Document PDF

If you haven’t scanned your paper document yet, now let’s start with scanning your paper document to digital document formats like PDF. In so doing, you can get editable digital documents from the paper ones.

Jump to the next part if you already have a PDF document file.

To convert paper documents to digital documents, here we’ll use the popular free document scanner app Adobe Scan.

1. Download and install Adobe Scan from Apple Store or Adobe Scan from Google Play Store.

2. Launch the Adobe Scan app on your mobile phone.

3. Then Adobe Scan will activate your mobile phone camera to scan the paper document.

4. Adjust the placement of your mobile phone camera to align the paper document with the four calibrating dots.

5. When the document is successfully scanned, hit the Save PDF button from the main workplace to save the scanned document as PDF.

If the file size of the scanned document is too large for the high DPI, the PDFgear free compressor tool will help to reduce the scanned document size.

How to Edit a Scanned Document Online for Free

Now it’s time to edit the scanned document. To edit scanned documents online, the best way is using the free online PDF tool PDFgear. The PDFgear editor section presents a clean and intuitive document editing screen for you to customize the scanned document.

With annotations, free text, and drawings, you can easily add notes to PDF. And the options for commenting PDF and highlighting text in documents are also available. More PDF editing features such as eSigning, cropping, stamping, etc. are waiting for you to find out.

Step 1. Go to PDFgear PDF Editor

Navigate to PDFgear PDF editor tool with your web browser. PDFgear works with both your PC and mobile phones

Step 2. Upload the Scanned Document to PDF Editor

Drag and drop the file into the PDF editor to upload the scanned document. On your mobile phone, hit the Choose files button instead.

Step 3. Edit the Scanned Document

Now you’re in the document editing workplace, and you can use the option from the upper panel to edit the scanned document at will. Document editing options include: annotating, stamping, drawing, commenting, e-Signing, cropping, etc.

Step 4. Print the Edited Scanned Document

When you’re done editing, hit the print button from the upper-right side of the document editing workplace to print the edited PDF document to PDF, Microsoft OneNote, Microsoft Print to PDF, etc.

How to Edit a Scanned Document in Word

Scanned documents can also be edited in Microsot Word, the ones with text notably, and in this part, we’ll talk about that.

According to the Microsoft recommended method, you can also open the PDF document in Microsoft Word, edit the PDF, and save it as Microsoft Word document format.

Moreover, there’s a more effective solution. Apart from a scanned PDF editor tool, PDFgear serves also as a fast PDF to Word converter that converts scanned documents to Microsoft Word in 2 seconds, so you can easily edit a scanned document in Word.

The following tutorial shows you how to convert scanned document PDF to Microsoft Word documents with PDFgear.

1. Navigate to PDFgear PDF to Word converter.
2. Drag and drop your files into the converter box to upload the scanned document.
3. Then PDFgear will automatically convert the scanned document to an editable Word document.
4. When the conversion’s done, hit the blue Download button to download the Word document.

Hint: As Microsoft Word mainly works with text-based documents, this method works best with text-based PDF documents. To edit picture-based documents in Microsoft Word, please see our guide on how to edit JPEG in Word.

How to Scan and Edit a Document: FAQs

Is it possible to scan a document and edit the text for free?

Yes, it’s possible to scan a document and edit the text for free. All you need is a free scanner app Adobe Scan or the free OCR tool OnlineOCR, and the best free online PDF editor PDFgear.

How to scan and edit a document on Mac?

To scan and edit a document on Mac, the simplest method is using OnlineOCR to scan the document, and edit it with the free online PDF editor PDFgear.

How to scan a document and edit the text on iPhone and Android?

To scan a document and edit the text on iOS and Android, you need to scan the document with a scanner app or an OCR tool, and edit it with the best free online PDF editor PDFgear. PDFgear is compatible with iPhone and Android smartphones.

How to type on a scanned document?

To type on a scanned document, you need the free online PDF editor PDFgear. It allows you to annotate, eSign on, and add free text to scanned PDF documents.

How to edit a scanned document in Word?

There are two ways to edit a scanned document in Word. One is saving documents as Microsoft Word, and another is converting PDF to Word with PDF online converter tool.

How to edit a scanned document online?

The online PDF tool PDFgear is the best option for you to edit a scanned document online for free. It allows you to add comments to, sign on, add free text to, and do more with scanned documents.

To Sum Up

That’ll be the complete tutorials from scanning your paper document to digital PDF document files and scanning a digital copy of the document, to editing digital PDF documents with the best free PDF management tools or Microsoft Word. I hope you have learned this guide and have followed the tutorials to edit your scanned document.

The introduced online tool PDFgear is an all-in-one PDF toolbox for converting, compressing, reading, and editing PDF documents. The service is clean and safe, and completely free to use, so don’t forget to give it a try! It will certainly be helpful in editing scanned documents!

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