Converting Scanned Documents to Word (version 7 of products)

Use these tips to get the most out of scanning and scanned PDFs. Please note these tips are for version 7 of our products.

• What Microsoft® Office do I need?
• What options do I need to setup for scanning to work in Solid PDF Tools?
  • When would I use the setting None?
  • When should I use the setting Scanned only?
  • When do I use the All pages setting?
• How do I scan a paper document into an editable Word file?
• How do I convert a scanned PDF file into a editable Word document?

Microsoft ® Office 2003 or 2007 Required for Scanning

Version 7 of our products use Microsoft ® Office Document Imaging (MODI) - an optional module of Office 2003 and Office 2007. Usually this is already installed with your version of Office. Please note that MODI was not included with Office 2010 but you can install from the previous version.

To see if MODI is already installed and/or to install it:

Office 2003:
Go into Start | Control Panel | Program and Features (Add or Remove Programs in Windows XP) | Microsoft Office 2003 | Change | Add or Remove Features

Check "Choose advanced customization of applications".

Next | Microsoft Office | Office Tools | Microsoft Office Document Imaging

Click Microsoft Office Document Imaging, and select “Run all from My Computer".

Office 2007:
Go into Start | Control Panel | Programs and Features (Add or Remove Programs in Windows XP) | Microsoft Office 2007 | Change | Add or Remove Features | Continue | Microsoft Office | Office Tools

Click Microsoft Office Document Imaging, and select “Run all from My Computer“.

Click Continue and follow the onscreen prompts.

Setting up Scanning Options in Solid PDF Tools

Solid PDF Tools offers a variety of conversion options so you can optimize how our software works with your documents. For scanned documents you might need to adjust the optical text recovery settings in Solid PDF Tools.

Run Solid PDF Tools then click on "Tools | Options". This will bring up an options dialog where you can set various PDF conversion and creation settings.

Level of Optical Text Recovery

Scanning paper creates an image of the page. Scanned PDF files also have images of pages that make up the PDF file. You need to perform optical character recognition to scanned pages to re-create the text.

Solid PDF Tools provides different levels of optical text recovery depending upon how you set up the program. Choose:

1. "None" is the best setting if you are only converting standard PDF files into Word documents (not scanned documents).

2. "Scanned only" should be used if you are scanning paper documents or converting legacy scanned PDF files into Word documents. If you convert a mix of scanned PDFs and standard PDFs you should choose this setting.

3. "All pages" should be selected if you ONLY work with PDFs that originate from a scanning device.

Scanning Paper and Converting into Word Documents

If you are trying to scan a paper document into Word do the following:

1. Place your paper document into your scanner.
2. Run Solid PDF Tools.
3. Click on the Scan to Word palette to bring it in view.
4. On the Scan to Word palette make sure your scanner is selected in the Scanners list, adjust the Output options and click the Scan to Word button. Your paper document should be transformed into an editable Word document upon completion of scanning and converting.

View our Scan to Word slideshow for more details.

Converting Scanned PDF Files into Editable Word Documents

If you are converting a PDF file and get a non-editable image in Word you can do the following:

1. Run Solid PDF Tools.
2. Open the PDF file in the Document window using the "File | Open" command or "Convert PDF to Word" from the Getting Started menu.
3. Select "Document | Convert to Word" and click OK after setting up any other optiions you might want to use.
   
   Make sure you choose "Scanned only" or "All Pages" in the "Recognize content of PDF pages" options.
   
   Set the "Prompt for options" checkbox if you wish to control all the possible options for this particular PDF file conversion.
4. Click ok to start the conversion.

Note: If you use the Convert to Word palette then you will need to setup the optical text recovery options from the "Tools | Options" menu.

View our Convert PDF to Word slideshow for more details.