Scanning documents into Word

[bradley]

Hello,
Help!

I'd like to be able to scan an original document, gov't form, job
application, etc, into Word and type into the blanks provided therein
just as I would with a typewriter. I have checked out OCR software but
it is too powerful and would not render the original document intact
with corporate logos, text frames, etc. I do not need text editing
power since I do not want to alter the original document at all.

Everywhere I've gone for help on this I have a difficult time
convincing people that I don't want to text edit the original format or
images. It's so simple that it hurts to have to keep explaining it. I
just want to use my scanner and printer as one would use the old
Olympia or Remington gathering dust on the closet floor. I tried
pasting a scan as image into word but am unable to determine if it's
possible to type text on top of the image without text boxes. Is there
any more elegant way of doing this?

I spoke with someone at Iris this Morning. The company develops
character recognition software for the industry and the developer I
spoke with seemed to sincerely share my astonishment that there seems
no way to do what I'm asking with any simplicity. He said I was the
first person in his five years with the company that had ever asked of
such a thing. As if I was asking my laptop to sprout wings and fly me
to the moon. Am I? I guess it's just one of those days. Can anyone
please help?

 

[Graham Mayor]

This can be done, but is usually too much trouble for a one-off. It means
scanning the document then using that image as a background image with the
form built over the image with tables.

The corporate edition of Finereader 6/7 has a forms module that makes the
job a little easier, but again not worth the effort (or the cost) unless you
are filling lots of identical forms.

Many government forms are available on-line, and many job applications
require that the forms are filled by hand.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP
E-mail (e-mail address removed)
Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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[dfrog]

"bradley"
do a Google search for.....filloutaform...........its a small freeware
program by j d m cox, which allows you to import a scanned form and then
place text boxes where you want, and then add text into those boxes.
hope this helps
dfrog

 

[Graham Mayor]

The link for that is http://jdmcox.com/ and the result is a handy if
somewhat inflexible tool; however this reminds me that any software that
allows the annotating of images could be used for this. Particularly fine in
this regard is SnagIt from www.techsmith.com which has a 'Catalog' tool
which provides extremely powerful annotation tools that are simple to use. I
found that I could fill a one page form very quickly using its text tool. It
has a further advantage in that it will work with a variety of graphics
formats. I used GIF.

Such tools are far superior to Word for this task. If necessary you could
always import the resulting graphic into Word.

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP
E-mail (e-mail address removed)
Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>

 

[dfrog]

Graham,
Thanks for expanding my offering, I have learned a little more yet again.
dfrog