How to extract text from screenshots on Windows 10 using built-in tools

[javajolt]

Sometimes you want to extract snippets of text from a screenshot, picture, or app (for example a reader app that won’t let you copy or a PDF that is an image rather than text).

There are of course various apps to do Optical Character Recognition (OCR) but Windows 10 has a built-in tool that makes the process very quick and easy for small amounts of text.

Surprisingly we will be using the built-in Windows Search tool, and the process goes as follows.

Step 1: Get your text on the screen (e.g. this difficult PDF in the browser).



Step 2: Click on the Windows Search icon (the magnifying glass on your lower left), and then click on the Search with ScreenShot button.



Step 3: Using your mouse, highlight the area of text you want to process.



Step 4: Windows will then pass the image to Bing, who will do the recognition of the text, which you can then copy and do with what you want.



source