This page covers complete guides on how to scan paper documents or document copies into digital PDF documents or Microsoft Word documents, and how to use Microsoft Word or the best free online PDF editor to edit the scanned document.
How to Scan and Edit a Document
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.
Do Not Miss: How to Add Notes to PDF, 14 Best Heic to PDF Converters, How to Highlight PDF on Mac
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.
OnlineOCR Scan Document
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.
Launch Adobe Scan App
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.
Scan the Document with Adobe Scan
5. When the document is successfully scanned, hit the Save PDF button from the main workplace to save the scanned document as PDF.
Save the Scanned Document
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.
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.
Navigate to PDFgear PDF editor tool with your web browser. PDFgear works with both your PC and mobile phones
Drag and drop the file into the PDF editor to upload the scanned document. On your mobile phone, hit the Choose files button instead.
Upload the PDF File to PDF Editor
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.
Edit PDF PDFgear
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.
PDFgear Print
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.
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.
Download Word File
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!