Working in scanned document

[Marshall5FD8]

Good morning. I purchased InDesign to help me update a book my sister wrote many years ago. I had the pages scanned and now want to enter certain pages to change or add to sentences. If I replace a word with a longer word, it types over the next word. It does not push the existing sentence ahead of the longer word. Is InDesign the wrong tool for this project, and should I have purchased Acrobat? I am retired and the cost of Adobe products is an issue for me. 

[SJRiegel]

When you say you "had the pages scanned" -- what format were they scanned into? How are you placing the scanned text files into InDesign? More info on the whole workflow (also with some screenshots of the problem, taken with Hidden Characters and Frame Edges showing) will be needed in order to know how to help you.

[Creamer Training · Accepted solution]

Unless you ran OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on the scans to convert the scans into editable text, you won't be able to edit the text. 

Here are some options to investigate:

• Some scanning software includes the OCR option--check where you had the pages scanned.
• You can get stand-alone OCR software.
• You can import the pages into Acrobat, put in order (if necessary), run OCR there, and export to Word document.

You will most likely have to clean the text up--this can happen in Word and then in InDesign. When you are done cleaning and updating the text, you can create a book in InDesign. 

If you subscribed to the entire Creative Cloud and not just InDesign, you will already have Acrobat Pro.

[J E L · Accepted solution]

@Marshall5FD8 You have some good advice from others here already and I'll jump in to say that yes, InDesign is the right program for book production. It has a rather steep learning curve but for simple book projects you should be able to get the hang of the basic tools in a reasonable amount of time if you tend to learn software easily. There are many great online manuals and tutorials that are free.

Now, you might be able to achieve what you want to do with Acrobat alone. It depends on how extensive the changes are and what you plan to do with the book once you get it reworked. Sometimes it can be a nightmare to reflow text in Acrobat properly from page to page if you are inserting more than a few words in a paragraph. But if you want to proceed with InDesign, here are the steps I recommend.

The first thing you want to do is get the text from your sister's original book into an editable manuscript form so you can  make your changes and then style the text with InDesign. When you scanned the book pages, you had a choice to scan to either text or pictures. I hope you chose the former! Most scanners render text into a PDF. From the PDF, you'll need to export the text to a Word document (or Rich Text format). If you have Word, then that's the best way to go. Clean up all your scanned and converted text in Word first. Make your edits and remove extra spaces, characters and so on. Make sure you've retained any italics or boldface. I like to convert all text in Word to one font (i.e., Times New Roman) and then apply individual fonts in InDesign. Run spell check and have the text proofread again unless you are only making a few simple changes. The less text editing you do in InDesign, the better.

In InDesign, set up your document with the trim size and an estimated number of pages (you can always add or delete pages later) that you want the final book to be PLUS A .125 inch BLEED all around if this is to be prepared for print. Typically, page counts in multiples of 16 are recommended (called signatures) for press efficiency or extra blank pages will be added to the end of the book to compensate in binding. You can have a half signature of 8 pages as well. Also, the book's front/back cover and spine are designed in a separate InDesign document that has to be calculated based on the final page count so the spine width is correct. You'll also need to consider the inside margins based on the number of pages so that text doesn't fall too close to the center of the spread.

Next, you want to import ("place") your text into InDesign. This is done through mapping or you can sometimes drag and drop the text and get great results. There are plenty of posts here about how to get your Word document ready for importing into InDesign. From this point, you can now work with all the tools to create styles for headlines and text. I hope this is helpful. Please let us know if you have any questions along the way as you go!

[Marshall5FD8]

Jain, I appreciate such a great answer to my post, and so quickly. I will admit that I come to this table with no skills in the use of valuable software such as Adobe. I am retired, having spent most of my working life in a wildlife and wild land management contract with a large hydro-elect company in the northwest. I just now turn to writing, a dream I always had. I have recently self-published one book, The Lottery Ticket 2035,” and have offered to help my sister with a book she wrote many years ago. Thank you. I will follow all of the help offered and try to get this done.

Marshall Adams
(360) 607-5276
whmi2020@gmail.com

"As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend." (Proverbs 27:17)

[J E L]

You're welcome, glad I could help. Sounds like you had a dream job working in the wild. Marshall, adding personal information here is not allowed so we'll have to remove your number and email address. Wishing you the very best of luck with all your projects.