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?
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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.
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".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.
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:
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Ask Leo! - How do I scan a document into Excel?
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Textbridge Pro - it's been a while since I used it, but Textbridge Pro is a powerful OCR package.
Article C3012 - May 2, 2007
I have a .tif file, i want to convert it into notepad .txt extension? How can i do it? Please let me know
Posted by: karthikeyan.v at April 11, 2009 2:42 AMSir,
I am scaning some text in *.tif file, How can i convert *.tif file word file with out contants changeing
Posted by: goutam at April 11, 2009 4:49 AMI want to convert the .tiff image to a editable word document
Posted by: shafi at April 26, 2009 6:23 AMHi sir,
please tell me how to compare tif files and notepad files (or) word document files.
Posted by: S.Subramanian at May 29, 2009 9:40 PMThank you
sir i want to convert the tif file in to note pad ...how i have to do sir
24-Jun-2009
Would you be kind enough to send me a few links to download OCR Freeware? Please and thanks.
Posted by: Nathaira at July 9, 2009 5:05 PMsome problem in converting the tif image file into word file & then getting the HTML taging .
Posted by: raj at July 10, 2009 9:27 AMIs there any free software for that purpose .
please send me the proper solution for that file . its and urgent requirment.
i read ur article, its really interesting. i need tif to word convertor. can u provide me the link or else where can i get this software?
Posted by: joe at July 23, 2009 5:47 AMI have a .tif file, i want to convert it into notepad .txt extension? How can i do it? Please let me know
Posted by: logu at August 19, 2009 7:42 PMI HAVE .TIF IMAGE..I WANT TO CONVERT THIS .TIF INTO NOTPAD .TXT OR WORD .DOC FILE
Posted by: jilmalika at September 7, 2009 3:23 AM