Page scan, shared PDF, screenshot, photo of a brainstorm session on the white board… it’s easy to collect course content and notes that are not editable and not accessible. Luckily it is even easier with Google to extract uneditable text to a document through optical character recognition (OCR).
As an automated process, OCR is not 100% accurate but it can be pretty close. It works best if you start with a clearly legible image or file.
Convert with Google Drive
With Google Drive you can extract text from all types of image files and images that have been saved as PDF. Watch the video to learn how or follow the direction below.
- Add your file to Google Drive
- Right click on the file
- Choose Open with… and Google Docs
Convert with Google Keep
Google Keep works to quickly grab image text. You can snap a quick picture and do this from the Google Keep app or with Keep in your browser. Google Keep is available with all other Google Workspace applications in the Google Apps Launcher (that waffle menu).
This short video shows how to do this from the app but it works with the same menu options on desktop as well.