OCR in OneNote: How to Copy Text from Images and Files

Discover OneNote’s Revolutionary OCR Feature: A Complete Guide to Easily Extract Text from Images and Image Files

What is OCR in OneNote?

OneNote, a Microsoft product, offers a very useful feature: Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This tool allows you to easily extract text from images or image files, making it an effective method for transferring information, such as from a scanned business card, directly into your notes. The extracted text can then be pasted into OneNote itself or other programs like Outlook or Word, facilitating the management and editing of information. This feature is available for OneNote for Microsoft 365, OneNote 2021, OneNote 2016, and OneNote 2013.

How to Use OneNote’s OCR to Extract Text from a Single Image

OneNote’s OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is an extremely useful tool for extracting text from an image. This feature can be particularly valuable in situations like digitizing a business card or a printed document. Here’s how you can use it to extract text from a single image:

• Launch the OneNote program on your computer.
• You can insert the image from which you wish to extract text into one of your OneNote pages. This can be done simply by dragging the image onto the page or using the image insertion function.
• Right-click on the image from which you want to extract text.
• Select “Copy Text from Image.” OneNote will begin processing the image using its OCR technology. This process can take a few seconds, depending on the complexity and quality of the text in the image.
• After the text has been recognized and copied to the clipboard, you can paste it into another part of your OneNote page or into another program, such as a Word document or an email. To do this, place the cursor where you want the text to go and press CTRL+V (or the corresponding paste command on your operating system).

The availability of this option may vary depending on various factors, such as the complexity of the image, readability, and the amount of text present. If the option does not appear immediately, you may need to wait a few seconds for OneNote to complete the text processing. In some cases, the process could take up to 24-48 hours.

Using OneNote’s OCR to Extract Text from Multi-Page Image Files

Using OneNote’s OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to extract text from images in a multi-page file is a simple yet extremely useful process, especially when working with multi-page documents such as reports, journals, or digitized books. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Start by opening OneNote on your computer.
2. Upload the file containing the multi-page images into OneNote. This can be done by dragging the file directly into a OneNote page or using the insertion option.
3. Right-click on the image within the file.
4. Choose one of the following options:
   1. “Copy text from this printout page” to copy text only from the current image.
   2. “Copy text from all the pages of the printout” to copy text from all the images in the file.
5. Place the cursor where you want to paste the text.
6. Press CTRL+V to paste the text.

The effectiveness of the OCR heavily depends on the quality of the original image. After pasting the text, it’s always good practice to check it to ensure it has been recognized correctly, to avoid errors or inaccuracies.

Conclusions

Using the OCR feature in OneNote to extract text from single images or multi-page files represents a significant advantage in terms of efficiency and productivity. This tool not only simplifies the digitization of paper documents but also makes previously inaccessible content manageable and editable.

Through OneNote’s OCR, you can easily transform the static text of images and digitized documents into dynamic text, ready for editing, sharing, and integration into other documents. This capability is particularly useful in academic, professional, and personal environments, where the rapid conversion of information from one form to another is often necessary.