Have you ever had the need to extract text out of an image to work with it in Word or another editor? Typing it all out is time consuming. Fortunately, the built-in Windows Snipping Tool makes it easy and fast. You can use it as it has an optical character recognition (OCR) feature which converts text from images to be editable content without installing any extra software.
OCR using the Snipping Tool’s feature
Windows Snipping Tool is a useful tool both to take a screenshot and pull text out of the screenshot. In order to make use of the OCR feature you will need to ensure your Snipping Tool version is 11.2308.33.0 or later. Update it through the Microsoft Store if not.
Steps to Extract Text
- Open the Snipping Tool: Open the Snipping Tool and launch the image that you want.
- Take a Screenshot: Using the tool, capture the part of the image the text is in.
- Enable Text Actions: At the bottom of Snipping Tool’s interface click Text Actions.
- Select and Copy Text: Choose “Copy” for what text you want or use the “Copy all text” button for everything. Highlight what text you want right click and then choose “Copy.”
It will once copied put the text into your clipboard, ready to paste into Word, Notepad, or any other editor.
Why Use the Snipping Tool?
Since you’re using the latest Snipping Tool and skipping the trouble of downloading third party apps, you’ve saved your day. Windows 11’s built in OCR functionality is a quick and easy way to convert image text to editable documents. For office work tasks it is a time saving and productive addition you will be glad have.
Once you take these steps you can get your machines to work with image based text files making it more usable without having to install extra software.