Word Expert Needed Please

Carmy · Jul 12, 2009

Using Brother MFC 240C to scan to Word 2000.

First, it will only scan text as File, .pdf. (huh?) From there I copy and paste to Word, and save the document.

Problem is, I have a box around the text. As I have multiple pages to scan and put into one folder to create one document, I can't have a box around each page.

I've tried copying it everywhere to get rid of the box but nothing is working. I can't even copy it to Wordpad to see if I can make changes there.

Any suggestions? Apart from throwing the MFC out the window?

alleycat · Jul 12, 2009

You could try converting the pdf file to a Word file before copying and pasting it to your main Word file. If you don't have that capability, you can do it online.

Carmy · Jul 12, 2009

Thanks Alleycat. I'm away to give that a shot.

Carmy · Jul 12, 2009

Um . . . Can't see how I can do that.

For some reason, the MFC send the scan through my browser. How about that?

Deleted member 42 · Jul 12, 2009

Scanners read everything as an image.

You need to use software to convert that image into text.

This is called Optical Character Recognition or OCR. Most scanners come with a program to do that after the item is scanned; look for a setting that says OCR or a program that came with the scanner that does OCR; TextBridge is often included.

Once you have OCRd the scanned image (which takes at least a minute or two) you will still have to proof the file.

Carmy · Jul 12, 2009

Thanks a million, Medievalist.

Oh, he**! Do you know how long I was on the phone today with a Brother technician? Hah! The sequence I showed above is what he told me to do. Took an unbelieable time to get the document onto my PC, via my Browser, and then it was unusable. He was an idioit!

I tried OCR several times before I called them, but I couldn't find the documents on my PC. I just tried it again and --hey, presto! -- there they were -- dozens of them!

I'm off to do some editing.

Thanks again!

Matera the Mad · Jul 12, 2009

Carmy · Jul 21, 2009

LOL Thanks Matera.

Trouble is there are so many. I'm quite P.O. with all these Administrator, All Users, Owner places on this computer. My old PC had one owner and it worked fine. Now I have to hunt every time. I used Search often.

Matera the Mad · Jul 21, 2009

Yeah, the "Documents and Sh*ttings" mess is hairy. But you can specify your own pet place as a default save location with a lot of software. Or use workarounds for some. All I have in my most hated folder(s) is a bunch of shortcuts to the real storage places, on other drive partitions far from Windwoes. When some stupid dunkware opens a save or open dialog in the My zone I can get away from there fast. Some painful data loss many years ago soured me on using Special Folders forever. Since then I've gotten better at file recovery, but I've also heard worse stories of profile corruption and total disappearance. I wouldn't mind it so much, might never have declared total war, if the default names -- My wittle this, My wittle that -- weren't so insulting.

Hope your OCR went well. I have to scan and OCR the minutes of a meeting every month because the organization's secretary doesn't have e-mail :ROFL:

And you don't want to know the lengths I will go to get text out of a locked PDF :e2chain:

I'm babbling 'cause I'm finally up for the day...sort of

Carmy · Aug 1, 2009

You can babble at me any time, Madeira.

Oh, what a lovely war I've had with Brother. After deleting and installing the MFC and it's accompanying SoftScan program a couple of times, finding it still wasn't working as it should to give me editable documents, I deleted and installing again. (Yes, I went through Control Panel, as we're supposed to do.) Before doing anything else, I phoned Brother and demanded to speak to techie who knew what he was doing. I got Jimmy.

Jimmy knew what he was doing. He walked me through deletions in places on my computer where I'd never ventured before. We then installed again and the MFC worked like a charm. OCR comes up into WordPad, right away and on screen, editable and copyable to Word. What a relief!

Maybe the parable is -- declare war and get nasty!

Word Expert Needed Please

Carmy

alleycat

Still around

Carmy

Carmy

Deleted member 42

Carmy

Matera the Mad

Bartender, gimme a Linux Mint

Carmy

Matera the Mad

Bartender, gimme a Linux Mint

Carmy