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You opened a “PDF” and tried to copy a paragraph. Nothing happened — selection just dragged a blue rectangle across an image. That document was scanned, not generated, which means the text isn’t text yet. It’s pixels of text. To edit it in Word, you need OCR.
What OCR actually does
Optical character recognition walks the image, isolates each glyph, and matches it against a model of the chosen language. It then writes a normal text layer back into the document. Modern engines (Tesseract 5, ABBYY, Azure Read) hit 98%+ accuracy on clean printed scans.
The three settings that matter
- Language. OCR works best when you tell it which language to expect. Mixing languages? Pick the dominant one and hand-fix the rest.
- Layout preservation. “Flowing text” gives you clean paragraphs. “Exact layout” preserves columns and tables but can produce odd line breaks.
- Output format. .docx for editing, .txt for piping into other tools, Markdown for AI / static-site workflows.
Five-minute workflow
- Open the scanned-to-Word tool.
- Drop in your PDF. Pick the source language.
- Choose “Flowing text” unless you need exact layout (most people don’t).
- Download the .docx and open in Word or Google Docs.
- Skim once for OCR errors — typically just a handful per page on a clean scan.
What to expect by document type
- Clean printed contracts: 99%+ accuracy, ready to edit.
- Faxes and old scans: 90–95%, plan to proofread.
- Handwritten notes: 60–85% on block printing, much lower on cursive. Treat as a draft.
- Multi-column newsletters: Use exact-layout mode and check column boundaries.
Frequently asked questions
Will tables come through to Word?
Simple tables yes. Complex nested tables often need cleanup. The OCR engine reconstructs structure, but it's a best effort, not magic.
Is my scan kept after conversion?
No. Files travel over SSL and are auto-deleted within 60 minutes — including the OCR working copy.
Which language gives the best accuracy?
English, German, Spanish, French and Portuguese top 99% on clean scans. CJK and right-to-left scripts are competitive but more sensitive to scan quality.