If you've ever had to manually retype text from a photo or a screenshot, you know how much of a time-sink it can be. I use two specific tricks—Microsoft OneNote and a free online OCR tool—to handle this for me. I use these methods constantly, both for personal projects and at work, to save a ton of effort and get things done faster.
Here’s how you can do it too:
Using Microsoft OneNote
You don’t need the internet to extract or copy text from the picture on this method.
1. Open Microsoft One Note.
2. Click Insert tab, insert the Picture that contains the text you want to Extract or Copy. You can also copy picture and paste directly into the new Notebook.
3. Right Click on the Picture and choose Copy Text from the Picture.
Using Free Online OCR Services
Free Online OCR Service
You can extract text from PDF and images (JPG, BMP, TIFF, GIF) and convert into editable Word, Excel and Text output formats. You need an internet connection to do this.
1. Upload file (max file size to upload is 15 MB)
2. Select language (choose from 46 languages) and output format (choose from docx, xlxs, txt)
3. Convert
4. Copy or save the extracted text from the image
I’m always looking for ways to work faster. If you’ve found another tool that works even better, please share it in the comments below!
