I need some help. The thread regarding OCR is closed. The purpose is to take a 113 page masters thesis and using a recommended FREE OCR software that would allow me to update and edit the content. I was going to use scanning feature. I have Word and I need help to create an editable document?
iPad (9th generation)
This sounds like it will be an onerous task. The various software I have encountered is either designed to be used in command line interface, to be used with images page by page in a copy to clipboard mode, or requires a paid upgrade to do more than one page at a time.
https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract?tab=readme-ov-file#running-tesseract
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ocr-text-recognition-textify/id1522041836?mt=12
113 pages for a master's thesis? My PhD was only 50 or so. ;-)
You don't need OCR software. You should be able to lift the text right from a scan of each page. This ability was added to the OS at least one major release back.
Scan a page. Open the page in Preview. Click and hold, and drag the mouse across the text. Even though it's a raster image, the OS will figure out what's text and highlight it. Copy the highlighted text to the clipboard, then paste into your Word document.
It typically isn't perfect. You'll probably have to spell check everything when it's all pasted in. But OCR was never 100% accurate, either.
Why not simply use your iPad camera to photograph each page, then copy and paste the contents of each photo into your Word document?
I want to take my masters thesis that was typed 50 years ago to create an editable document
