Reference number: CH000590

Can you modify or change a document once it has been scanned?

Question:

Can you modify or change a document once it has been scanned?

Answer:

By default, scanners scan a document or page as an image. Although this image can be modified or adjusted through an image editor, if the document contains text, that text cannot be changed or inserted into another document. If you wish to scan a text document and adjust or modify the text in that document you must use a software program with OCR capabilities, below is a short listing of some programs with these capabilities. 

• FineReader - ABBYY
• Omnipage - ScanSoft
• Readiris - IRIS
• Textbridge - ScanSoft

Click here to search for other OCR software solutions

By using one of these programs you would have the ability to scan a document, convert the document with OCR and save that document as standard text so it can be changed, updated, or searched.

Additional information:

• Additional dictionary terms relating to computer scanners can be found on our scanner dictionary definitions page. 
• See our OCR dictionary definition for additional information about this term.