If you've Microsoft Office then you can use Microsoft Office Document Imaging. It's very good but not usually part of the standard MS Office install so you may need to go to "Add or Remove Programs" or "Programs and Features" in your Control Panel. Find MS Office, right click on it and choose "Change".

From the popup that appers choose "Add or Remove Features" and select Microsoft Office Document Imaging from the Tools section. The document needs to be in TIF format for the OCR to work.

Recent editions of MS Office also come with OneNote which has its own OCR engine. See http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/14595/ocr-anything-with-onenote-2007-and-2010/

Other than that you're going to have to look for other OCR programs.

Textbridge - http://shop.nuance.com/store/nuanceus/en_US/pd/productID.111906300?resid=TUqrgwoBAlUAABLuU84AAAAC&rests=1307980408172 - is very good, but take a look at http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-5-free-ocr-software-tools-to-convert-your-images-into-text-nb/ for reviews of some free ones.

View the original article here