The Times online - How to convert to plain text??

[rbell35]

I have recently obtained the online 'The Times' newspaper and am wondering whether I can convert the print to plain text so that I can copy to a document for clarity. How do I achieve this? Thanks, Rob

[PrueM]

Hi Rob,

Unfortunately as the articles in The Times have not been scanned using OCR (Optical Character Recognition), you would have to either type them out yourself, or see if you can find some free software to convert to text.  I suspect that the only way to do it, though, would be to print off the articles, and scan them yourself using an OCR function on your scanner.

Someone else may know differently!

Cheers
Prue

[rbell35]

Thanks Prue!

[mrwilson]

Hi,
      You don't have to print and scan, you can copy an image of the article to your PC and upload to online OCR conversion..  there's free sites available like;

http://www.free-ocr.com/ , http://www.free-online-ocr.com/  
The latter giving you conversion options like word, pdf, txt,etc;

No OCR software is perfect, especially when it comes to converting newspaper print. Expect to make numerous corrections.

mrwilson

[PrueM]

Ah, see, I knew someone would have a better solution! 
Thanks, mr wilson 

[Glitterlamp]

Many thanks for this Mr Wilson, I tried both links and the second site http://www.free-online-ocr.com/  worked well and I now have a Word doc, however, as you intimated, my doc needs a "little attention" but it does save a total re-type - a great help, thanks again. 

[rbell35]

Thanks heaps Mr Wilson!
Ciao, Rob

[bilsat]

look for free software called "Calibre" it converts to several formats, I use it for my Kindle.
Pete

[rbell35]

Thanks Pete, Ciao, Rob