How to copy text from images in Microsoft OneNote

It is possible to extract text from images that you have saved in Microsoft OneNote. Thanks to the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature, you can copy text from images with just one click. You can also use OCR to copy text from the page prints that you have inserted, such as PDF documents.

OCR works well in OneNote, but the conversion quality will depend on the quality of the source image or the printout of the file you use. If you want to use OCR to copy text from images in OneNote, here's how.

Copy text from single images in OneNote

Copying text from an image saved in OneNote notes is an easy process, but you'll need the desktop version of OneNote to do this, instead of the Windows 10 UWP app for OneNote. Unfortunately, the OneNote UWP application has fewer features and lacks the ability to convert images into text.

You can download the free version of OneNote on your computer or use the web version of OneNote to convert images.

If you use the desktop version of OneNote, open the notebook section containing the image. To copy text from an image, right-click the image, then click the Copy Text from Picture option .

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Text from image will save to clipboard. You can paste this part on OneNote notebook or elsewhere.

To paste content in OneNote, right-click and choose one of the paste options or press Ctrl + V on the keyboard.

Copy text from the print file in OneNote

The contents of other files, such as PDFs, can be inserted into OneNote notebooks as a printout of the file. Pages from these inserted files appear as images that cannot be edited directly.

One way to overcome this problem is to insert the print file, then convert the inserted image into text. This assumes that your printed file contains legible text that can be converted with OCR.

First, you will need to open your OneNote document and insert the print file. Open OneNote and, in the ribbon bar, click Insert> File Printout .

Select the file to insert, such as a PDF file, then click Insert to insert the page of the file as an image in the OneNote notebook.

After a while, OneNote will insert the pages into the document. When the pages are inserted, you can choose to copy text from one page or from all pages at once.

To do this, right-click on the image you have selected and click on the Copy text from this page of the printout option . If you want to copy text from all images, right-click on any image, then select Copy text from all pages of the printout instead.

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Text from images will be saved to the clipboard. You can paste directly into OneNote by right-clicking on the notebook and clicking on the paste option. You can also paste by pressing Ctrl + V on the keyboard.

OneNote is a great tool for converting images into text, but there are alternatives. You can use the Microsoft Office Lens Mobile Scanner application to convert images or use web services like Google Docs.