Convert handwritten / typed / printed pages into text for free with AI

If you have an old diary or other historic document you want to share online, you know that typing up a text copy can be very time-consuming. Free AI tools may be able to help.

I recently tried using AI to extract the text from several old documents, and I’m impressed with the results. The image below shows a handwritten page from Mr A N Braudé’s wartime diary, and the text version that the AI created.

The AI only got six letters wrong out of the whole page, so even including the time it took me to correct the mistakes it was still much faster than typing up the page manually.

I’ve recorded a short video that shows how to use AI to extract text from a variety of documents, including newspaper clippings, printed pages, and handwritten notes. I also cover some of the problems I encountered, and give suggested workarounds. Click here to watch the video on YouTube.

Or if you’d like to try it straight away on one of your documents, follow these steps:

1. Scan a page from the document you want to convert to text. Make sure the page is flat and well lit, scan at a resolution of between 300 and 600 dpi, and save the result as a JPG / JPEG file.
    
2. Use your web browser to visit the free AI tool Google Gemini. [Update: Several readers wrote to tell me Google Gemini isn't currently available in Hong Kong. They recommended Deepseek as an alternative.] (Other tools such as Claude or ChatGPT also work, but I had the best results with Gemini.)
    

3. Sign in to Google if required, then you should see a screen like this:
     

   

    

4. Click the ‘+’ sign, marked (A), and upload the scanned page from step 1.
    
5. Click ‘Ask Gemini’, marked (B), and type this instruction into the box: 
   
          extract the text from the attached image
    

6. Your screen should look similar to this:
    

   

    

7. Click the ‘Submit’ button, marked (C).
    
8. Review the text it creates and check for accuracy.