How to Insert a Scanned Document in Google Docs

Mehvish Mushtaq is a computer engineer by degree. Her love for Android and gadgets led her to develop the first Android app for Kashmir. Known as Dial Kashmir, she won the prestigious Nari Shakti award from the President of India. She has been writing about technology for 6+ years and her favorite categories include how-to guides, explainers, tips and tricks for Android, iOS/iPadOS, social media, and web apps.

Paurush dabbles around iOS and Mac while his close encounters are with Android and Windows. Before becoming a writer, he produced videos for brands like Mr. Phone and Digit. On weekends, he is a full-time cinephile trying to reduce his never-ending watchlist, often making it longer.

Types of Attachments Supported by Google Docs

Besides charts, tables, and drawings, you can add images in all formats, such as JPG, PNG, GIFs, etc., to Docs. However, you cannot add PDF files to it. Now,PDF filesare important to mention here because scanned documents are usually saved as PDFs.

So, what’s the alternative? Keep reading.

Method 1: Save the Scanned Document as JPG in Google Docs

Instead of saving the scanned files in the PDF format, you must save them as JPGs. Fortunately, many scanner apps provide both saving options. You can try the following apps:

Once you save your scanned document as an image, it’s time to add it to Google Docs. For that, follow these steps:

Step 1:Launch theGoogle Docsapp on your phone. Then,open the documentwhere you want to add the scanned image.

Step 2:Once in the document, tap wherever you want toadd the scanned imageand hit theadd iconat the top.

Step 3:From the menu, selectImage, followed byFrom photos.

Step 4: Navigate to thescanned image. It will be added to your document.

The above method has a limitation if you have a multi-page document. In that case, you must scan and insert every page individually.

Method 2: Directly Add an Image From the Phone Camera

In the past few years, smartphone cameras have improved significantly. You can use them directly to insert a photo in Docs. That is, instead of using a scanner app first, capture a picture right from the camera in the Google Docs app and add it to your document.

OpenGoogle Docs> tap thePlus icon>Images>From camera> choose theimagefrom the Gallery app.

The only limitation of this method is that you need to position the camera to fit the document without any useless parts. That’s not the case with scanner apps. They recognize the outlines of your document and thereby make it easy to keep only the necessary portions.

In this method, you will learn to attach the Google Drive link of the scanned file (could be an image or a PDF file) instead of the actual photo. The receiver needs to click on the link to view the scanned image.

To do so, follow these steps:

Step 1:Open theGoogle Drive appon your iPhone or Android and tap theScan iconat the bottom-right corner.

Step 2:After scanning your document, it gets saved as a PDF file. Tap onSaveat the top right to confirm.

Step 3:Open thenewly created PDF fileand hit thethree-dot iconat the top. From the menu, tap onCopy Link.

Step 4:Open theGoogle Docs documentandhit thePlus iconat the top. ChooseFrom web.

Step 5:Enter the text to display over the link andpaste the linkin the Link box. Hit thecheck iconat the top. The link will be added to your document.

Scan Documents Using Google Drive

Well, why not use the built-in scan functionality of Google Drive to insert it into Google Docs? That’s because Google Drive saves the scanned documents as PDFs and as mentioned before, Google Docs doesn’t let you add PDFs.

However, Drive has an amazing feature on its website that lets you extract and insert text from scanned documents into Docs. You can use this feature to extract text from any image or PDF file.

Step 1:For that, first,scan the documentusing the native scan feature of the Drive app. Next, you mustuse Google Driveon your computer.

Step 2:Open theGoogle Drive website> right-click on thePDF filewhose text you want to extract in Docs. From the menu, selectOpen with>Google Docs. You will be taken to the Docs website with your PDF successfully converted into text.

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Last updated on 23 August, 2024

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