If you get a picture of data, do not panic: You don’t need to enter it by hand. Microsoft Word can convert the image into text for you.
If you’re creating a Microsoft Office file and receive textual content in the form of an image file, you may worry, specifically if you’re looking down a fast-approaching deadline. This generally happens when there’s no electronic copy of the information– for instance, a printed type.
Manually getting in that data eats into your time and opens the file up to typos and other mistakes. The bright side is that you don’t have to do this. Rather, you can use Microsoft Word to convert the image into text. The results won’t be perfect, but it will be much better than working from scratch.
In this tutorial, I’ll reveal you how to transform an image file into text that you can then utilize in Word or copy into Microsoft Excel or Microsoft PowerPoint. Word for the web will let you copy an image into a Microsoft Word document and after that download the file as a.pdf file, so you’ll still require the desktop variation to complete the method.
I’m utilizing Microsoft 365 on a Windows 11 64-bit system, but you can utilize earlier variations of Word.
How to copy an image into Word
You can’t open an image file in Word, however you can copy it into a Word document. Let’s suppose that you took a screenshot of a web page at TechRepublic.com and waited to your local system.
Keep in mind: If you’re dealing with an older version of Word and you can control the image format, conserve the image as a.png file. Doing so will eliminate many conversion issues in older variations of Word.
To copy that image into a Word file:
1. Use File Explorer to find the image.
2. Select the image and press Ctrl + C to copy the image to the Clipboard. If the image is available online, in an e-mail or PowerPoint presentation file, right-click it and select Copy Image.
3. Open a blank Word document and press Ctrl + V to copy the image into the file, or right-click and select Paste (Figure A). With the image selected, you can plainly see that it’s an image and not text.
Figure A
You can inform this is an image, not text,
by the border. When the image is inside Word, you’re ready to begin transforming it to text. SEE: Here’s how to prevent images from moving around in a Microsoft Worddocument. How to convert an image in Word
There’s no conversion function or alternative in Word, however that isn’t a problem. By conserving the.docx file as a.pdf file and then opening the.pdf file in Word, Word transforms the image into text. To begin, save the Word file as a pdf file, as follows:
1. Conserve the Word file with the copied image by clicking the File tab, selecting Conserve As or Save a Copy (OneDrive).
2. Define the area where you want to conserve the file.
3. Enter a name for the file– for instance, ImageWordSaveAsPDF.
4. Select PDF (*. pdf) from the Save dropdown (Figure B).
Figure B
Save the Word file with the image as a.pdf file. 5. Click Save. By default, your Adobe seeing app ought to open the new.pdf file. If essential,
save the new pdf file
as follows: 1. Click the File menu. 2. Pick Save As, as displayed in Figure C. You can change the name or not, but keep in mind the place of the saved.pdf. Figure C
Save the.pdf file. The next action is to go back to Word and open the
new pdf file as follows:
1. Open Word. 2. Click the File tab, and choose Open.
3. Locate the.pdf file, as displayed in Figure D. As you can see, I utilized a search term to quickly find the file.
Figure D
Usage Word to open the.pdf file. 4. Click Open. 5. When Word prompts you to convert the file to text, as displayed in Figure E 
, click OK. Figure E< img src= "https://www.techrepublic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/tr-2023-10-13-update-word-image-tect-e-770x335.jpeg" alt= "Word cautions you that it will transform the image to text if you continue.
“width=”770″height=”335″/ > Word alerts you that it will convert the image to text if you continue. SEE: Learn how to change page orientation in the middle of a Microsoft Word file. Modifying the results As youcan see
in Figure F, the converted image is now editable text. As I pointed out earlier, the results won’t constantly be perfect. You may lose formatting, and the file might contain text you do not want to keep. Figure F You can now modify the text. In the example file, you may wish to do the following: Tidy the best margin a bit by getting rid of unnecessary difficult returns. Apply the design Normal or some other style
- , so everything is the same. Run the Editor just in case. Surprisingly, the conversion turned the y in the word”you”into a v. Erase the marketing text at the bottom. Keep in mind, the original image file consisted of
- links to other short articles. I think most would agree that tweaking the transformed text is much easier than entering it by hand from the keyboard. As soon as the text is in shape, you can
- save it as a Word file or copy the text to an Excel sheet or PowerPoint slide. Source
