How to Scan to a Word Document

Andy Wolber is a former Lifewire writer who has been writing about technology for 15+ years. His focus is G Suite, iOS, and nonprofit sector apps.

What to Know

• Use your scanner to scan a document as a PDF, and then open the PDF with Word.
• Use the Office Lens and Word apps on mobile to scan documents and open them with Word.
• Once you have a PDF of your scanned document, you can also use an online conversion tool to convert it into a Word document.

Most installed desktop versions of Microsoft Word can open and convert PDF files into editable Word documents directly. Or, you can scan pages and open recognized text in Word with an Android or iOS smartphone camera or a desktop scanner.

Scan Documents and Open with Installed Word

The character recognition capabilities in Microsoft Word work best with documents that are primarily text. For example, Word would be likely to cleanly open and convert a contract comprised of several pages of printed text whereas Word may struggle to cleanly recognize text in a brochure where text is printed within or around images in anything other than a single column.

You’ll need a working scanner connected to a Windows or macOS system, along with a relatively recent version of Word.

Word 2019, Word 2016, Word 2013, and Microsoft 365 all support the ability to open and convert PDF files into Word documents. While Microsoft offers some instructions for converting PDF files into word for older versions, such as Office 2010 and Office 2007, the process is more complicated.

1. Follow your scanner manufacturer’s instructions to scan your document to a PDF file. Save this file at a location you will remember on your computer.

Select File >Open, then navigate to the location of your saved PDF.

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Select the PDF file, and choose Open. Word will open the PDF and convert recognized text into a document you may edit.

Read the converted text carefully, as some letters may be incorrect. The system may display items not identified within the document as images.

Use Mobile Apps for Android or iPhone

On an Android or iOS device, you’ll need to install both the Office Lens app (install for Android or iOS) and Microsoft Word (install for Android or iOS). After you install each app, tap to open it, and then sign in with your Microsoft account. Once you’ve installed and signed in to both apps, you’re ready to scan pages.

Tap the document, which will open your scanned file in a Microsoft Word document. For reference, the Word document includes the image you captured within the document.

Convert a PDF to a Word Document

If you lack access to Microsoft Word or your version of Word doesn’t open PDF files, you can still likely scan files to a PDF with an Android or iOS device, and then convert the documents into Microsoft Word.

1. Follow the instructions in How to Scan Documents to Your Phone or Tablet to capture your pages into a PDF.

Then, use a website service, such as CloudConvert.com or FileZigZag.com, to upload your PDF, convert it to a Word document format, then download it and save it to your system.