How to copy the text out of a picture or a screenshot
On Windows 11, the Snipping Tool’s Text Actions and Microsoft’s free PowerToys Text Extractor copy the words from anything on screen; on a Mac, iPhone or iPad, Live Text lets you select them in a photo like ordinary text. OneNote and Google Lens do it too. Check numbers by eye before you trust them.
30 October 2026 · 4 min read
What happens when text is read from a picture
A picture of words holds only coloured dots. Text recognition, usually called OCR, finds the shapes of letters and turns them into characters you can copy. It works best on sharp, straight, well-lit printed text, and needs to know the language: a program reading English will make a mess of Urdu or Greek.
On Windows
- Snipping Tool (Windows 11): take a snip, then press Text Actions in the toolbar. Copy all text, or select just the part you need.
- PowerToys Text Extractor: with PowerToys installed, Windows key + Shift + T, then drag a box round the words. They go straight to the clipboard.
- OneNote: paste a picture into a page, right-click it, Copy Text from Picture.
On a Mac, iPhone or iPad
Live Text is built in. Open a photo or screenshot in Photos or Preview, or point the camera at a page, and drag across the words to select them as if they were typed. Telephone numbers and addresses can be tapped directly.
Phones and online tools
Google Lens, in the Google app and in Chrome, reads text from the camera or a picture, and can translate it. It sends the picture to Google to do so, which matters for a passport, a payslip or a letter with someone’s details on it.
Getting it right
- Zoom or crop first. Small print in a large photo reads better when the picture is cut down to it.
- Straighten. A page photographed at an angle reads worse than one taken square on.
- Check figures. O and 0, l and 1, S and 5 are the usual swaps. A price or an account number copied wrongly is worse than one retyped.
- Tables need a different tool. These read lines of text; a table copied this way loses its columns. A spreadsheet’s own “from picture” import keeps them.
Our own product, disclosed
Where our own software comes into this
We make Rutba Office, a free desktop suite for Windows. Its Pictures app has Copy Text from Picture: choose the languages to read, and the words come out ready to paste, or select only the line you need, such as a telephone number. The reading is done on your own computer and the picture is not sent anywhere. For a printed table, Worksheets’ Data from Picture puts it into cells, and PDF’s Recognise Text makes a scanned document searchable.
Related
How to turn a pile of receipts into a spreadsheet
Decide the columns first, keep each receipt beside its row, and check every row by its own sums: the items add up to the subtotal, and the subtotal and tax to the total. Reading the figures by machine saves typing, and the sums are what tell you whether to trust them.
How to make a scanned PDF searchable without uploading it
A scanned PDF is a stack of pictures, so Find and copy have nothing to work with. Text recognition (OCR) reads the words and writes them in as an invisible layer under each page. Free programs do it on your own computer, so the scan never has to leave it.
How to type Urdu on Windows and use your office software in Urdu
Writing Urdu on a Windows computer takes three things: the Urdu keyboard, a Nastaliq font, and paragraphs set to run right to left. Seeing the programs themselves in Urdu is a separate step, and how far it goes depends on the program. Here is how to set up each part.
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