Scan to Word or Excel
Start free

Convert scans to Word or Excel

Turn a scanned document into an editable Word file, or a scanned table into an Excel spreadsheet, using OCR to read the text.

  • Runs on our secure server
  • Deleted within 1 hour
  • Processed in London
  • Up to 25 MB per file
or drop files here

Up to 25 MB per file · 1 file at a time on your plan

How it works

  1. Add your scanned PDF

    Click Choose file or drag a scanned PDF onto the page.

  2. Choose Word or Excel

    Pick Word (.docx) for letters and reports, or Excel (.xlsx) for statements, price lists and other tables.

  3. Choose the languages

    Select the language or languages of the text so it is read correctly. English is chosen by default, together with the language of this page when OCR supports it. Twenty-seven languages are available.

Pro

Do more with Pro

  • No ads, anywhere
  • Files up to 200 MB
  • 50 files at once
  • Saved workflows
Try Pro free for 14 daysThen £7.99 a month. Cancel any time.

About converting scans to Office files

A scan is a picture, so the usual converters have no text to work with. This tool first reads every page with OCR, then rebuilds the result as a Word document or an Excel workbook. Choose Word for text: letters, contracts and reports become paragraphs you can edit. Choose Excel for tables: rows and columns are detected and written to cells, which saves retyping figures from a printed statement or price list. Recognition quality depends on the scan. Pages scanned straight, at around 300 dpi, in good light and with dark text on a light background give the best results. Handwriting is not reliably recognised. Always check names, numbers and totals before relying on them, because a smudge can turn a 3 into an 8. Selecting the right language helps with accents and characters; choose several if the document mixes languages. If you only need searchable text and want the document to look the same, OCR PDF is the better tool.

Limits: one PDF per task, up to 25 MB with a free account, 200 MB on Pro and 500 MB on Business. Each page read counts towards OCR pages (20 a month with a free account, 20 before you sign in, 500 on Pro and 1,000 per user on Business), and each file counts as one Office conversion (10, 300 and 500 per user a month).

Before you sign in, files can be up to 25 MB and you can run 10 server tasks a day. A free account raises this to 25 MB and 10 tasks a day.

Privacy: your file is uploaded over an encrypted connection to our UK servers, processed automatically with no person opening it, and deleted within 2 hours (1 hour on Free), or straight away with Delete now.

How to use the PDF tools: Step-by-step help with every tool, limits and your files.

Scan to Word or Excel: frequently asked questions

Should I choose Word or Excel?

Word for documents that are mainly text, Excel for documents that are mainly tables of figures.

Can it read handwriting?

Not reliably. It is designed for printed or typed text.

How does this count towards my limits?

Every page read counts as one OCR page, and the whole file counts as one Office conversion.

Can I convert a photo of a document?

Turn the photo into a PDF with JPG to PDF first, then convert that PDF here. A straight, sharp photo works best.

Related tools

All Optimise and OCR tools