[accessally_user_firstname], have you ever wanted to convert a PDF or image file to text? This is handy if you have a photo of an article or quote, or a PDF that you need to grab the words from. Here are a few options we like:
- Google Docs itself has pretty good OCR (optical character reader) capability built-in. When you open an image with text (eg: PDF, JPEG) with Google Docs it will produce a document with editable text, but it doesn’t generally interpret the formatting all that well. eg: it works best with clear text the is the right way up, plus may not like text contained in complex tables 😉.
- Installing Kami Chrome Extention is also a good option. It has a suite of tools for taking any existing document, including scanned PDFs, which enable you to draw, type, annotate, comment, augment, enhance, and otherwise bring it to life documents on the screen.
- Inserting an image onto Google Slides and creating text boxes where you’d like students to enter answers is also a solution.
However, to get comprehensive OCR especially if you need to convert documents frequently or those with complex formatting like tables, for example. Subscriptions to pro-versions of apps – eg: Adobe Acrobat Pro would be an excellent investment. These types of apps will convert text and keep the formatting.