Optical Character Scanning (OCR) using Google Keep

I promised in a previous blog post to show how to take a picture of something with words you want to be able to use somewhere else, such as to translate to another language, to use in a paper for class, or something you want to save to remember later. Remember to write where you copied any text use or you might get in trouble!
However, today we are going to talk about how to load in text that you would like to use in ChatGPT. For example, you might make a word study list, to have ChatGPT write new study questions for you.

It is very easy and free(!) to use Google Keep as a kind of scanner. You can upload pictures of text, posters, anything with words and have Google Keep scan the image for the text. I will show the steps and then share a website where you can change the text so you can use it in a Google Doc or elsewhere.

Here are the steps. I will add pictures later to match each step.

1. Open Google Keep: Open the Google Keep app on your phone or tablet. If you don't have the app on your smartphone, you can download it for free from the Google Play Store or the App Store.
2. Create a new note: Click on the "New note" icon at the bottom right corner of the screen. It looks like a plus sign on an iPhone.
3. Give your note a title. I also like to click on the little pin at the top so that the newest note is at the top. You can also give the note a new label or use a label you already have.
4. Tap on the camera icon in the note and select "Scan document." Point the camera at the picture of the text you want to scan and take a photo of it. I often cover the text I don't want to use so I can put the picture directly into Google Keep. Otherwise, you can take a picture using the camera on your smartphone and edit the text you want to use and load that into Google Keep.
5. Change the image to text: Tap on the three dots in the top right corner of the screen and select "Grab image text." Google Keep will now convert the image to text you can change using a word processor or Google Docs.
6. One thing I like to do is to copy the text to a free website that lets me reformat the text, such as by taking out the returns at the end of each line so I can easily change the right hand margin, for example. I like to use this one at text fixer The link is directly to the page where you can remove breaks.

That's it! You have now used Google Keep and to create text you can work with.Next you can copy it into ChatGPT and do some of the things I mentioned in previous blogs.