Scanning into Excel

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

roryfan - 02 Mar 2008 01:17 GMT

Recently, my hard drive died and I lost a lot of files. Is it possible
to scan a printed Excel file into Excel? (I know...I should have backed
it up!)

thanks in advance
john g

Reply to this Message

Pete_UK - 02 Mar 2008 01:47 GMT

You will need some OCR software (which is often supplied with scanners) to
convert the graphical image to editable text. Many OCR packages have the
ability to recognise columns and produce a file in Excel format, but you
might still have to do some manual changes depending on how good your
printout is.

The process can only convert what is on paper, so you will have to
re-instate any formulae yourself.

Hope this helps.

Pete

> Recently, my hard drive died and I lost a lot of files. Is it possible to
> scan a printed Excel file into Excel? (I know...I should have backed it
> up!)
>
> thanks in advance
> john g

Reply to this Message

Gord Dibben - 02 Mar 2008 01:51 GMT

Only if you have a really, really, really good OCR application with your
scanner.

Even then you probably won't get 100% data recognition and will require some
editing.

Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

>Recently, my hard drive died and I lost a lot of files. Is it possible
>to scan a printed Excel file into Excel? (I know...I should have backed
>it up!)
>
>thanks in advance
>john g

Reply to this Message

Rate this thread: