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Technology Tip of the Week - November 14, 2006

Don't Retype - Scan!

Have you ever needed to convert a printed document to an electronic file? You could retype it into Word but that's time-consuming and error-prone. A better solution is to scan your document right into Word. It takes minutes and with the newer scanning programs, the document comes in without a lot of errors to fix. If you have a scanner in your department make sure you choose the selection for "text" and not "graphic" so that you can edit the document later.  Don't have a scanner in your department? Then you can use the scanners in the Center for Instructional Technology on your campus (Knight - Room 4100, Flanagan - Room 2462, Liston - Room 223 and Newport - Room 223). The Centers for Instructional Technology use a scanning program called OmniPage to create text documents in Word. Since the Centers may have different versions, check in the room for detailed instructions. The following instructions are for OmniPage 14.

To scan a document:

  1. Open OmniPage Pro from the Start-All Programs menu or desktop icon
  2. Place your document in the scanner
  3. Under the first button labeled 1-2-3 click on the down arrow under the button and choose the 1-2-3 option to start the wizard.
  4. Under the next button labeled 1, click on the down arrow under the button and choose Scan. Then click on the 1 button to start your scan
  5. A preview of your document will display. If it looks okay to you, click on the Accept button to complete the scan
  6. A dialogue box will come up after scanning the first page and ask if you want to scan more pages into the file you are creating. If you are scanning multiple pages, select that option. If you are scanning a single page or have completed scanning your entire document, click on the Stop loading pages option.
  7. Under button 2 choose Automatic from the drop-down menu. Then click on button 2 to start proofreading your document. OmniPage will stop at anything questionable to allow you the option to change or ignore the text.
  8. When the proofreading is complete, click on OK to accept the changes.
  9. Click on button 3 to save your document.
    Type a meaningful filename into the Filename box
    Make sure next to Save In: you select the location to save your file (for example, My Documents, or your USB drive)
    Next to the Save As: option verify that Text is selected .
    Next to the Files of type: choose either the Microsoft Word 2000, XP (*.doc) option or the RTF Word 2000 (*.rtf) option
    Next to Formatting level:  choose the True Page option to retain the original layout and formatting
  10. Click on OK to complete the process. That's it!

    Note that if you click next to the Save and Launch option, OmniPage will open your document in Word immediately

You're done! Isn't that better than retyping??

For more help with these features, please contact one of the IT Instructional Support team (Norm Grant, Gene Grande or Linda Beith) or faculty mentors Tony Basilico or Kathy Beauchene.

Website of the Week

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Feel free to post your thoughts or opinions of this site in the Teaching Forum message board.

These tips are provided by the Department of Information Technology instructional support team. If you have any questions on these tips, or wish to offer your own, please feel free to contact Linda Beith at lbeith@ccri.edu. View an archive of past technology tips at http://it.ccri.edu/Training/Tips/tip_week.shtml.

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