Ask Leo!

How do I convert a ".tif" file to a Word ".doc" file?

Home » Microsoft Office » Microsoft Word

Summary: Converting images of documents as stored in ".tif" or other image formats back to editable Word ".doc" files requires something known as OCR.

Is there a way to convert a file received as file.tif (originally a Word text .doc) to file.doc?

Yes and no.

The problem is that your ".tif" file may have started out as a Word document, but it's not a Word document any more. Far from it, in fact.

".tif" stands for "Tagged Image Format". As it's name implies, it's a format for storing images, or pictures, much like the ".jpg" images you might get off of your digital camera.

If someone created a ".tif" of a Word document they did the equivalent of taking a picture of the document even though no camera was necessarily involved. Many screen capture programs will allow you to save a "picture" of a document on your screen as an image file. Some even go so far as to provide a faux printer driver that creates a series of image files when the document is "printed".

There are approaches to converting an image of a document back to a real, editable, document. The good news is that it doesn't matter much whether the image is ".jpg", ".tif" or any of the other photo/image formats. The bad news is that it's not perfect, and often quite error prone.

"The problem is that OCR is exceptionally difficult to get right."

It's called "optical character recognition" or OCR.

I've spoken about OCR recently when someone asked about scanning a document into Excel. OCR software takes a look at the picture of your document, examining the picture of each letter in that document, and attempts to determine what letter that picture represents. Advanced OCR software may even try to automatically figure out where paragraphs are and more.

The problem is that OCR is exceptionally difficult to get right. For example "1" (one) and an "l" (lower case L) look very much alike. If the photo of the document is blurry or distorted, or even if the characters on the page use different fonts and styles, the OCR algorithm can get confused and produce the wrong results. Often close results, but still wrong.

So to convert your ".tif" back to a Word document OCR is the place to start, but you'll still need to carefully proof-read the OCR results.

Related:

  • Textbridge Pro - it's been a while since I used it, but Textbridge Pro is a powerful OCR package.

More articles about: Microsoft Word

Article Useful? Link to it from your own website; just copy/paste this HTML:

Article 11453 | Posted May 2, 2007

Recent Comments

Sir,

I am scaning some text in *.tif file, How can i convert *.tif file word file with out contants changeing

Posted by: Kanagaraj at June 8, 2007 11:07 PM

Do let me know whether there is and free trail software through which i can convert tif files into microsoft waord without changing itts contents & formatting.

Plz help me out

Posted by: Rina at May 3, 2008 08:17 AM

Post a comment on "How do I convert a ".tif" file to a Word ".doc" file?":






(Email Address will not be published.)

Remember Me?

By popular demand...
my tip jar
Cuppa Joe
Buy Leo a Latte!


New!

RSS feed Subscribe to the RSS Feed specifically for comments on this article.

Before commenting, please...

Please wait. Your comment is being processed ...


Ask Your Question:


ask-leo.com
Web

Archives

By Category
By Date

Advertisers

Advertise on Ask Leo!

««   »»

Question? - Ask Leo!
Who is Leo?
Link to Leo!

Terms, Conditions & Privacy