How to Edit Text After Scanning

Extracting Your Scanned Text

1. 
   Download OneNote to your desktop PC. On a Mac or Windows PC the process will vary slightly depending on operating system versions and preferences; you can download it from Office.com. Overall, OneNote for Mac is very similar to OneNote for Windows; the OCR functionality works basically the same in both.^{[2] X Research source}
2. 
   Click the Pictures icon. You can find the icon on OneNote's Insert tab (the icon says "Picture" on Mac). The OneNote interface has a large ribbon across the top by default and the "Pictures" (or "Picture" on Mac) icon is on the Insert tab towards the left. On Mac, you can also choose "Picture" from the "Insert" menu at the top of the screen. When you click the icon, the Insert Picture window appears (or the "Choose a picture" window on Mac).^{[3] X Research source}

   1. If you don't see the tabs or icons click the Ribbon Display Options button to the immediate left of the Minimize button in the top right of the application window and choose "Show Tabs and Commands." On Mac you can just use the menus at the top of the screen, so the tabs aren't necessary.
   2. Hover your mouse cursor over the buttons to see what they're called.
3. 
   Navigate to and select the image you want. After you do, click Open ("Insert" on Mac). The image file appears in OneNote at the place where the cursor is.^{[4] X Research source}

   1. You can also choose File Printout rather than Image to extract text from the printout of a document.^{[5] X Research source}
   2. As an alternative, press the ⎙ PrtScr button on your keyboard to capture an image of your current screen, then paste it into your document using Ctrl+V (or ⌘ Cmd+V on a Mac).
   3. Text in the image that you are extracting from needs to be typeset for good OCR recognition.^{[6] X Research source}
4. 
   Right-click the image and choose 'Copy Text From Image.' The text in the image will be copied to your PC's clipboard.

   1. On Windows, if instead of an image you choose File Printout in Step 2, right-clicking on one page of the printout will result in two alternate choices here: 'Copy Text From This Page of the Printout' or 'Copy Text From All Pages of the Printout' – select the one you want.
5. 
   Paste the text back into OneNote using Ctrl+V (or ⌘ Cmd+V on a Mac) and edit it in the app if you like. You can also choose to paste the image into another program.

   1. You can select the text using your mouse cursor and then pressing Ctrl+C (or ⌘ Cmd+C on a Mac). Alternatively, you can right-click (or Ctrl+click on a Mac) the text and choose "Copy."
   2. If you have saved the extracted text and are accessing it from a non-desktop version of OneNote, Instructions will vary significantly for copying and pasting. On Android, for example, you need to press and hold on part of the text you're wanting, use the resulting "handles" on either side to select all the text, and press the Copy or Cut button (the icons are of two pages on top of one another and of a pair of scissors, respectively).
6. 
   Paste the copied text into another application. Microsoft Word or Google Docs are popular applications; simply open a new or existing document in that app and press Ctrl+V (or ⌘ Cmd+V on a Mac). The text will likely look pretty ugly when you paste it in.

   1. You may want to save the document immediately before editing so you can go back to the original, unedited text.
7. 
   Edit and format the text as normal. You are limited in terms of formatting and such only by the app you choose to paste into – the latest version of Microsoft Word, for example, always has far more options and gives you much more control than Microsoft Notepad or even Google Docs, for example.