What scan-to-editable does
The process is straightforward but technically demanding.
- OCR (Optical Character Recognition) — we run the scan through a high-accuracy OCR engine that recognises every character and reads the original layout structure
- Layout reconstruction — we rebuild the document in the target format (Word, Excel, etc.) preserving the original's columns, headings, tables, and reading order
- Manual review and cleanup — every OCR result is reviewed by a human editor who fixes recognition errors, especially around tables, headers, and special characters
- Format and deliver — final file is delivered in your target format, with all text live and editable
Input formats we accept
- Scanned PDFs (single-page or multi-page)
- Photos of documents (JPG, PNG, HEIC from phones)
- Scans at any DPI (we re-render to a sensible DPI internally)
- Color or black-and-white scans
- Skewed, low-contrast, or partially damaged scans (we deskew and clean)
- Password-protected scans (send the password in a separate channel)
- Multi-language scans (English, Arabic, French, Spanish, Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, and most other Latin and non-Latin scripts)
Output formats
- Microsoft Word (.docx) — preserves layout, headings, tables, page breaks
- Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) — for tabular data, with formulas and formatting where detectable
- Google Docs / Google Sheets — cloud-native, collaborative
- Plain text (.txt) — for simple text-only documents
- Markdown — for technical documentation
- Searchable PDF — if you need a PDF back, but with live text inside (text is selectable, search works, accessibility compliant)
- HTML — for web publishing
When to use scan-to-editable
The service is most useful when:
- You have a printed document you need to edit (signed contract, printed form, photo of a whiteboard)
- You received a fax and need the text
- You have a PDF that was scanned badly and you need it OCR'd properly
- You need to extract data from a printed table into Excel
- You have a book or report you need to make accessible (live text, screen-reader compatible)
- You need to update a printed document that has no editable source
Pricing
Scan-to-editable is priced per page based on scan quality.
- Clean scans — £10 per page. Standard office scans, good lighting photos of typed documents.
- Standard scans — £15 per page. Mixed quality, some skew, some handwritten elements.
- Poor scans — £20 per page. Faded, low-DPI, heavy skew, lots of handwriting, or non-Latin scripts requiring specialist OCR.
Bulk discounts apply for 10+ pages. Contact us for a quote on a multi-document job.
Accuracy and limitations
OCR is not magic. Typical accuracy on clean typewritten text is 99%+. On handwritten text it can drop to 80-90%. The cleaner the input, the better the result.
If you have a particularly challenging document (very old, faded, in an unusual script, or with heavy handwriting), we can do a free 1-page sample first so you can see the quality before committing.