How can I scan a document into MS Word?

[Guest]

I want to scan an put-of-print book (I own the copyright) into a TIFF doc so
that it can be sent to a print-on-demand publisher. How do I scan it into
Word?

 

[Stan Brown]

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 07:40:05 -0800 from Jed

I want to scan an put-of-print book (I own the copyright) into a TIFF doc so
that it can be sent to a print-on-demand publisher. How do I scan it into
Word?

Is this a trick question? Use a scanner, of course. Its accompanying
software will guide you through the process. Just make sure you
select TIFF in the file type when doing Save As.

But "scan it into Word"?? You wouldn't do that. If you have an image
to be printed, send your publisher the image.

On the other hand, if you want to edit the text, even just changing
fonts, you still don't ant the TIFF files in Word -- in fact you
don't want TIFF files at all. You'll need software called "OCR" or
"text recognition" -- it will direct the scanner and then lead you
through the process of creating a text file. Omnipage is one of the
better known packages for this, but most scanners come with some form
of text-recognition software.

Caution: You will not get true commercial print quality with the
typical scanner. I would try one sample page and see if your
publisher's print quality is acceptable. If not, it's most likely
scanner resolution that is your problem.

 

[Bill Ridgeway]

Jed,

You've asked two questions here. Many scanners come with software that will
scan and produce a file in TIFF format. They may also come with Optical
Character Recognition (OCR) software which will feed into a word processing
file (such as Word). A problem with OCR is that it may have a problem
recognising characters and will put in what it thinks it sees. That means
you will have to proof read your book again. It may be useful though if you
intend to update the text. The ease of updating is also another Achilles
heal in that it makes it easy for anyone to plagiarise your work.

Hope that helps!

Regards.

Bill Ridgeway
Computer Solutions