Some services or programs can scan your document, use OCR to convert the scanned image to readable text, and save the result as a PDF. However, these services and programs often cost money.

By transforming a PDF file into an editable document, you can easily select and modify text on the converted text—similar to how you’d do if you created the document yourself.

Go to the "File" menu, select "Open" and choose your scanned PDF document. At this point, your scan is considered a single image by the program and the text areas are not editable.

iOS 15.4 brought a new level to scanning on iPhones and iPads when it introduced the scan text feature. With this tool, you can scan your written grocery list or to-dos into your phone’s notes app.

I quickly scanned about 150 pages of pencil notes using a Xerox printer. Although I chose the darkest scanning setting, the text on the emailed pdf files is still too light.