Portable Document Format (PDF) is a go-to solution for sharing and storing all kinds of business documents, such as reports, brochures, templates or research papers. One of the format’s main appeals to business users with a need to manage multiple documents is the fact that PDFs are not editable by default. In short, if you want to share your document with someone electronically, but also want to protect your document from editing or getting skewed in the transfer, you would turn it to PDF from editable formats like Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and so on.
Besides that, PDF has also become a preferred format for digitizing and electronic archiving of scanned, paper-based documents. Many established businesses that have been around for decades have had to scan their document archives in the era of modern technology and business practises. Scanning a document and converting it to PDF for archiving purposes is a perfectly sound and effective solution.
However, what if you have to modify a scanned PDF file with pages and pages of text? Basically, you have two possible solutions.
The first one is to retype the original document in Microsoft Word or similar text processing application. This is a time-intensive task for shorter documents that are a few pages long. But, it is the ultimate productivity killer for documents with lots of pages and words.
This brings us to another solution for modifying PDFs: a special program for converting files from PDF to different editable file formats (like .doc or .docx). There are numerous tools that easily translate digitally generated PDFs to other editable formats, but most of them tend to reach a dead end when faced with a PDF file that has been generated from a scanned document. The problem with text locked in scanned PDF files is that it is only an image representation of characters that make up a certain textual content. It can be a challenge to convert such documents to an editable MS Office file format. This challenge can lead to frustration and belief that document editing workflow can’t be automated.
Thankfully, it is not true. There is a technology that can recognize text in images, called Optical Recognition Technology, or shortly, OCR. It is true that most PDF converters, especially the simple, free ones that many new entrepreneurs resort to, don’t utilize this technology and can’t really streamline business document management. But, there is such an advanced and yet easy to use, fully free online scanned PDF to Word converter.
The trait that makes this free online tool so advanced is its Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature that recognizes the characters from the scanned (image) PDF file and turns them into electronically readable text, which can then be fully edited using other software.
The conversion process is easy and takes just 3 clicks:
- First select the PDF file that you want to convert.
- Type in your email address. You will receive the converted file at this address.
- Click “Start” to send your PDF for conversion.
Scanned PDF to Word converter can also convert regular, digitally created PDFs to Word, which means that you can use it to manipulate all your PDFs without having to spend countless hours on manual retyping from any PDF into editable Microsoft Word files.
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