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Built in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in Google Docs

Ever had to retype a page of text? It's a long process that nobody really likes to do — except Google!

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) lets you convert images/PDFs with text into text documents. All you need to do is scan, upload and Google will convert your document.

So let's look at the steps:
  1. Scan your document. You can use a regular scanner, photocopier/scanner or numerous apps for your mobile device to scan your document.
  2. Upload the file. Currently, to take advantage of OCR, you must do this through your desktop browser.
  3. Ensure Convert text from PDF is selected in the settings:

  4. Start the upload

Once conversion is completed, Google will create a document for you that contains an image of each page followed by the text it converted for that page. This provides an easy way to check Google's work and make any corrections. You can see 2 samples here.

For more information see: About Optical Character Recognition in Google Drive.

To find out how you can take advantage of Google Apps in your area, contact Trevor Beck (beckt@macewan.ca) at 780-497-5053.
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