computer scanning question

[deadminnowcatcher]

I got a form that i need to fill out. I scanned it onto my computer but how can i type the answers in on the form?? tried opening it with word and it is all coded. Anyone know how to do this? I assume it has to be saved in a particular way and then opened with a particular program? please help!!!!!

[Tom7227]

What's the three letter jobberdo after the dot? Probably .pdf or .jpeg. I don't think you can scan something directly into Word. Maybe in photoshop using the text option, but I really don't know. I suppose you were supposed to mail it today, right? Go find a 12 year old and the kid will have the answer for you.

[eurolarva]

You will need full blown acrobat. This will allow you to convert the scan which is probably a Tiff and convert it to PDF. I believe with acrobat you can then create it as a template and type over it. The only other option is to use OCR from the scanner which will make the document a text file then you will have to import that into your word processor and set it up the way you want to.

[Whoaru99]

I don't believe you can do that by just scanning it it.

In order to "fill in the blanks" the document has to be set up with fields in which to enter the data.

You could do it in a roundabout way by making text boxes with no borders and no background fill in each place that you have to put data, then put your info into the text boxes.

[Rodbldr4fun]

eurolarva is right. At least that is the only way I have found to work.

[upnorth]

There are some scanner apps that will allow you to use OCR, optical character resolution. It sometimes works, sometimes not. You may be able to scan it as an image file and open it with paint or something of that nature and add text boxes, cumbersome but it may work out for ya.

[DinkADunk]

If this is a oneoff then use a typwriter or fill it in by hand. If you haven't done this before and aren't set up for it you will be wasting a lot of time trying to setup your computer to do this.

BTW, OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition which converts pixels to characters and is a way of trying to pull the text off of a scanned page. Adding fields over an image is a different task. Any image editing software will allow you to place text over a packground.