What is it called when you scan something in and want the computer to make it into a word file?

[KatyMac]

Is it some sort of recognition thing?

Do they work?

Would it be cheaper than paying someone to copy it in?

OCR - optical character recognition.

Usually pretty good with most printed text though obviously check it, mistakes are usually easy to spot.

Some (most?) scanners come with OCR software

Oh - I'll have a look when I get home

I have an HP All-in-one printer/scanner so I'll see if it has one

OK I have OCR on my installation disc - but my CD player is bust so I'll have to see if I can download it

I don't seem to be able to download it

Can I buy an OCR programme or are they printer specific

bump for help

No they are not printer specific. You can download free trial versions of a few OCR packages but the one that came with your printer would be better because the free ones are limited to the number of days/times/pages they can be used for.

HP usually provide Readiris, ABBYY FineReader and Omnipage are also OK, there are others.

Is this is a desktop PC?

Or you can do OCR within Google Docs. Interestingly Google Docs uses OCR software originally developed by HP.

No it's laptop

I could load it onto DD's laptop & use that to scan in & convert - but it's a novel (my dad wrote 20 years ago) so it's lots of work whatever I do

You don't mean a handwritten draft do you? Handwriting recognition is a whole different ball game and is unlikely to be viable.

I'd install the HP software on your DDs laptop. Or solve the bigger problem and get a £22 external DVD writer from Amazon.

There are many companies you can send the book to and they will scan and OCR it for you, either (expensively) by carefully handling it and manually scanning each page or (cheaper if you have more than one copy) by guillotining off the cover and putting it through an automatic scanner.

Oh it's lose (loose?) leaf manuscript that was typed by his secretary many many years ago

What do I google for 'scanning & OCR'?

Like the idea of the external DVD writer......I will explore

"ocr scanning services" should do, although many companies don't give prices online. scansolutions.co.uk is one that does, £100 for 500 pages for instance.

Thanks - I have passed the information on to him he will probably do nothing with it as normal