I need to edit a 12-page scanned invoice before Friday and the text won’t select when I open it. Is there an AI that can actually change the wording in a PDF?
The text won’t select because a scan is just a picture of the page, so nothing can edit it directly. What I’d try is uploading it to Google Docs, which does OCR and turns it into editable text, or open it in Word the same way. Then fix the wording and print back to PDF.
I had this exact headache with scanned patient forms at work. It happens because the scan is just an image, not real text. I use PDFcap for this. It recognises the printed words and lets you click straight into the text to change it. That worked brilliantly on my old computer.
Scanned invoices are just photographs, so an AI cannot change the wording directly. I learned this the hard way when redoing my market price lists. My tip is to open the file in Microsoft Word, which will recognise the text and let you type over it. Avoid wasting time trying to select text on a flat image.
Had the same thing last month with a scanned contract, the text isn’t real text yet so nothing can “edit” it until it’s recognized first. On a Mac, Preview can sometimes grab text after you run it through OCR, or on Windows you could try the OCR option in Word when opening the file. After that you can select and change wording normally.