Convert bitmap to editable text... Anyone know how?

[treemonkey]

I want to convert letters, numbers etc. in bitmap files to editable text. I know that scanners can do this but I feel stupid printing the stuff out to scan it in again.

 

[DaveSimmons]

It's not the scanner that does it, it's the OCR software that comes with the scanner. That software takes a bitmap from the scanner and converts it -- if you have OCR software and read the docs to see what bitmap formats it supports you shouldn't need to print anything.