How to convert images to editable text in Microsoft Word

If you get a picture of the data, don’t panic: You don’t have to enter it manually. Microsoft Word can convert images to text for you.

If you’re assembling a Microsoft Office document and receiving the text content as an image file, you might panic, especially if you’re looking at an impending deadline. Manually entering all that data will consume your time and open the document free of typos and other errors. The good news is that you don’t have to do this. Instead, you can use Microsoft Word to convert images to text. The results won’t be perfect, but it’s better than working from scratch.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to convert an image file to text that you can then use in Word or copy to Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Powerpoint. Word for the web will let you copy an image into a document and then download it as a .pdf file, so you’ll still need the desktop version to complete this technique.

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I’m using Microsoft 365 on Windows 10 64-bit systems, but you can use earlier versions of Word.

How to copy images into Word

You can’t open an image file in Word, but you can copy it into a Word document. Assume that you took a screenshot of a web page at TechRepublic.com and saved it to your local system. To copy that image into a Word document, do the following:

1. Use File Explorer to locate the image.
2. Select the image and press Ctrl + C to copy the image to the Clipboard. If the image is available online, in an email or PowerPoint presentation file, right-click it and choose Copy Image.
3. Open a blank Word document and press Ctrl + V to copy the image into the document (Picture A). With the image selected, you can clearly see it’s an image, not a text.

Picture A

If you’re working with an earlier version of Word and you have control over the image format, save the image as a .png file. Doing so will eliminate many conversion problems in older versions of Word.

Once the image is inside Word, you’re ready to start converting it to text.

How to convert images in Word

There’s no conversion feature or option in Word, but that’s not the point. By saving the .docx file as a .pdf file and then opening the .pdf file in Word, Word converts the image to text. To get started, save the Word file with the copied image by clicking the File tab, choosing Save As or Save a Copy (OneDrive), and then do the following:

1. Enter a name for the file, ImageWordSaveAsPDF.
2. Select PDF (*.pdf) from the Save drop-down menu (Figure BUT).
3. Click to save.

Figure BUG

By default, your Adobe viewer will open a new .pdf file. Content is still images. Save the .pdf file by clicking the File menu and choosing Save As, as shown in SIZE. You can change the name or not, but note the location of the saved .pdf.

SIZE

Back to Word. Click the File tab and select Open. Find the .pdf file, as shown in Visualizationand click Open. When Word prompts you to convert the file to text, as shown in Figure Eclick OK.

Visualization

Figure E

Figure F

As you can see in Figure F, the converted image is now editable text. As I mentioned earlier, the results are not always perfect. You may lose formatting, and the file may contain text that you don’t want to keep.

In the example file, you might want to do the following:

• Straighten the right margin a bit by removing unnecessary hard margins.
• Apply the Normal style or some other style, so everything is the same.
• Run the Editor just in case: Interestingly, the conversion turned the y in the word “you” into v.
• Remove the marketing text at the bottom.

I think most would agree that it’s much easier to tweak the converted text than manually entering it from the keyboard. Once the text has formed, you can save it as a Word document or copy the text to an Excel worksheet or PowerPoint slide.