Troubleshoot scanning

The scanned text of my document is hard to read.

1. On the File menu, click Scan New Document.
2. In the Microsoft Office Document Scanning dialog box, select a preset from the list.

   The Black and white preset is optimized for optical character recognition (OCR) when scanning black text on white paper. If you are scanning a document with color content, lighter text, or colored paper, try the Black and white from color page preset. The Grayscale preset is good for scanning continuous-tone images (such as photographs) with text.

1. On the File menu, click Scan New Document.
2. In the Microsoft Office Document Scanning dialog box, select a preset from the list to use as the basis for a new preset.
3. Click Preset options, and then click Edit selected preset.
4. On the General tab of the Preset Options dialog box, type a name for the new preset and then click Advanced.
5. Click the arrow to the right of the Resolution list and choose a higher number.

   Note   The higher the resolution, the more space the resulting file will require on your hard disk.

My scanned photos or artwork are of poor quality.

Try another scanning preset

1. On the File menu, click Scan New Document.
2. In the Microsoft Office Document Scanning dialog box, click a preset from the list.

   The Color preset is optimized for scanning photographs and artwork. If you are scanning a document with continuous-tone, non-color content, try the Grayscale preset.

1. On the File menu, click Scan New Document.
2. In the Microsoft Office Document Scanning dialog box, select a preset from the list to use as the basis for a new preset.
3. Click Preset options, and then click Edit selected preset.
4. On the General tab of the Preset Options dialog box, type a name for the new preset and then click Advanced.
5. Click the arrow to the right of the Resolution list and choose a higher number.

   Note   The higher the resolution, the more space the resulting file will require on your hard disk.

When I run optical character recognition (OCR), there are too many text-recognition errors.

If your scanned pages are slightly misaligned, or scanned sideways or upside down, OCR quality will suffer.

1. On the View menu, click Options.
2. Ensure that the Auto rotate and Auto straighten check boxes are selected.
3. Click OK.
4. On the File menu, click Recognize Text Using OCR to rerun OCR on the document and apply the two alignment options.

Even if their alphabets are similar, you should specify the language of the document you are scanning if it is different from the default language of your computer's operating system.

1. On the View menu, click Options.
2. In the OCR Language list, select the language you want, and then click OK.
3. On the File menu, click Recognize Text Using OCR.

1. On the File menu, click Scan New Document.
2. In the Microsoft Office Document Scanning dialog box, click a preset from the list.

   The Black and white preset is optimized for OCR when scanning black text on white paper. If you are scanning a document with color content, lighter text, or colored paper, try the Black and white from color page preset.

1. On the File menu, click Scan New Document.
2. In the Microsoft Office Document Scanning dialog box, select a preset from the list to use as the basis for a new preset.
3. Click Preset options, and then click Edit selected preset.
4. On the General tab of the Preset Options dialog box, type a name for the new preset and then click Advanced.
5. Click the arrow to the right of the Resolution list and choose a higher number.

   Note   The higher the resolution, the more space the resulting file will require on your hard disk.

Scanning a document takes too long.

All of the built-in presets have been designed to produce scans of optimum quality at the fastest scanning speed and the smallest file size.

1. On the File menu, click Scan New Document.
2. In the Microsoft Office Document Scanning dialog box, click a preset from the list. The Black and white preset provides the fastest scanning speed.

Decrease the scanning resolution

The higher the dots-per-inch resolution you are using to scan your document, the longer it will take to scan. In addition, the size of the file on your hard disk will increase.

1. On the File menu, click Scan New Document.
2. In the Microsoft Office Document Scanning dialog box, select a preset from the list to use as the basis for a new preset.
3. Click Preset options, and then click Edit selected preset.
4. On the General tab of the Preset Options dialog box, type a name for the new preset and then click Advanced.
5. Click the arrow to the right of the Resolution list and choose a lower number.

   Note   Optical character recognition (OCR) may lose accuracy at lower resolutions.

My scanned files are too large.

All of the built-in presets have been designed to produce scans of optimum quality at the fastest scanning speed and the smallest file size.

1. On the File menu, click Scan New Document.
2. In the Microsoft Office Document Scanning dialog box, click a preset from the list.

   The Black and white or Black and white from color page presets will produce the smallest file sizes.

Decrease the scanning resolution

The higher the dots-per-inch resolution you are using to scan your document, the longer it will take to scan. In addition, the size of the file on your hard disk will increase.

1. On the File menu, click Scan New Document.
2. In the Microsoft Office Document Scanning dialog box, select a preset from the list to use as the basis for a new preset.
3. Click Preset options, and then click Edit selected preset.
4. On the General tab of the Preset Options dialog box, type a name for the new preset and then click Advanced.
5. Click the arrow to the right of the Resolution list and choose a lower number.

   Note   Optical character recognition (OCR) may lose accuracy at lower resolutions.

I can't select text in a scanned document.

The page pane has two modes: Select and Pan. When Pan is activated, the mouse cursor is in the shape of a hand. The two modes are toggles, meaning that only one can be active at a time. 

• Open the View menu. If the Pan command is selected, click Select to enable text selection in the page pane.

You need to run OCR

You can select text in the page pane only after optical character recognition (OCR) has been performed. To do so, click Recognize Text Using OCR on the File menu.

The automatic document feeder doesn't work.

1. On the File menu, click Scan New Document.
2. In the Microsoft Office Document Scanning dialog box, click Scanner, and then make sure the correct scanner is selected in the Scanner list.
3. Make sure that the Use automatic document feeder check box is selected.

I can't scan multiple pages into the same file.

1. On the File menu, click Scan New Document.
2. In the Microsoft Office Document Scanning dialog box, click a preset from the list.
3. Click Preset options, and then click Edit selected preset.
4. On the Page tab of the Preset Options dialog box, clear the Save each page as a separate document check box.