Scanning Documents into Excel

[guilbj2]

I'm working with a large number of documents generated by an antiquate
system that doesn't offer any soft copy format that I can just copy o
import. The documents are computer generated and are printed on
laser printer. The hard copy is formatted in perfect columns. I'
looking to find a way to possibly scan the hardcopy directly into Exce
rather than (ugh) manually input all of the data.

Anyone know if this is possible and if so, how ?

Cost free is definitely a major plus, but I'd be willing to go gra
some software if need be... I just have no clue what I need

 

[Guest]

You need some OCR software (many packages available legally free - like Omnipage) and then a macro to import the stuff. As the original data is computer generated can it not be output to a file ????

 

[guilbj2]

Unfortunately no, there's absolutely no file format. I'm talking abou
a system that was designed in the late sixties... it's as old school a
you can possibly get. It had a minor facelift sometime in the 70's bu
it's been virtually untouched since then. The software that runs th
system is proprietary code that was written long before anyone eve
thought about integration with other software platforms