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With Microsoft Office Document Imaging, you can use a scanned document as easily as other Microsoft Office documents on your computer.

You can:

• Scan both single and multi-page documents.
• Perform optical character recognition (OCR)
   (OCR: Translates images of text, such as scanned documents, into actual text characters. Also known as text recognition.)
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• Copy and export scanned text and images to Microsoft Word.
• Read a scanned document as easily as a paper document.
• Search for text within scanned documents.
• Reorganize scanned document pages as easily as rearranging papers in a folder.
• Send scanned documents to others in e-mail or as a fax over the internet.
• Annotate scanned documents and faxes.

When should you use Microsoft Office Document Imaging?

Use Microsoft Office Document Imaging when you want to:

• Access and work with the text or images contained in scanned documents or faxes.
• Extract the text from existing scanned documents or faxes for archiving.
• Rearrange the page order of multi-page scanned documents.
• Read scanned documents quickly and easily on the screen.
• Annotate an electronic fax and return it to the sender.

Scanning and imaging

Microsoft Office Document Imaging actually has two components— a scanning component and an imaging component— listed separately in the Windows Start menu as Microsoft Office Document Scanning and Microsoft Office Document Imaging.

The first component controls the scanning of documents into your computer by using any installed scanner. This is done by using scanning presets, which control your scanner by using settings that are optimized for specific purposes. For example, the Black and white scanning preset is ideal when scanning pages of text for OCR, while the Color scanning preset is best for scanning full-color pictures or artwork. Also, OCR is automatically performed by default on text documents immediately after scanning, and you can easily scan multiple pages into a single file.

The second component makes it easy to view scanned documents on the screen, rearrange multi-page documents, select and manipulate recognized text, annotate scanned documents and electronic faxes, and send documents to others by e-mail or fax.