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OCR.Space, which was recommended in another answer, I found to work better than Google Docs for most documents, however neither OCR.Space nor Google Docs can properly scan tables. They can scan the text, but the original table formatting is lost.

Proper scanning of tables requires an application that can output an OCR scan as formatted text. Free Online OCR allows the user to download a properly formatted OCR scan in either .doc or .rtf formats, as well as .txt and .pdf.

OCR.Space, which was recommended in another answer, I found to work better than Google Docs for most documents, however neither OCR.Space nor Google Docs can properly scan tables. They can scan the text, but the original table formatting is lost.

Proper scanning of tables requires an application that can output an OCR scan as formatted text. Free Online OCR allows the user to download a properly formatted OCR scan in either .doc or .rtf formats, as well as .txt and .pdf.

For printed text, it is important that there not be too many errors, so you don't have to waste too much time correcting them. If a printed image is of bad quality, it can be improved before OCR using the Colors -> Threshold function in GIMP or the Threshold Adjustment function in Photoshop.

1. Upload the image to Google Drive and open it in Google Docs. This produces usable OCR text with many more errors than the second method. OCR of my test image had 23 errors, many of them in the blurry last paragraph. An OCR of a photo of the same BSOD taken with a cell phone had so many errors that it was unusable.

2. Microsoft OneNote is not free software, but I mention it anyway because OneNote does a better job of OCR than Google Docs which saves a lot a time. OneNote can be installed in Ubuntu with Wine, PlayOnLinux or CrossOver Microsoft Windows compatibility layer.

OCR.Space, which was recommended in another answer, I found to work better than Google Docs for most documents, however neither OCR.Space nor Google Docs can properly scan tables. They can scan the text, but the original table formatting is lost.

Proper scanning of tables requires an application that can output an OCR scan as formatted text. Free Online OCR allows the user to download a properly formatted OCR scan in either .doc or .rtf formats, as well as .txt and .pdf.

For printed text, it is important that there not be too many errors, so you don't have to waste too much time correcting them. If a printed image is of bad quality, it can be improved before OCR using the Colors -> Threshold function in GIMP or the Threshold Adjustment function in Photoshop.

1. Upload the image to Google Drive and open it in Google Docs. This produces usable OCR text with many more errors than the second method. OCR of my test image had 23 errors, many of them in the blurry last paragraph. An OCR of a photo of the same BSOD taken with a cell phone had so many errors that it was unusable.

   OCR.Space, which was recommended in another answer, I found to work better than Google Docs for most documents, however Google Docs does a much better job than OCR.Space of scanning text that is formatted as tables.

2. Microsoft OneNote is not free software, but I mention it anyway because OneNote does a better job of OCR than Google Docs which saves a lot a time. OneNote can be installed in Ubuntu with Wine, PlayOnLinux or CrossOver Microsoft Windows compatibility layer.

For printed text, it is important that there not be too many errors, so you don't have to waste too much time correcting them. If a printed image is of bad quality, it can be improved before OCR using the Colors -> Threshold function in GIMP or the Threshold Adjustment function in Photoshop.

1. Upload the image to Google Drive and open it in Google Docs. This produces usable OCR text with many more errors than the second method. OCR of my test image had 23 errors, many of them in the blurry last paragraph. An OCR of a photo of the same BSOD taken with a cell phone had so many errors that it was unusable.

2. Microsoft OneNote is not free software, but I mention it anyway because OneNote does a better job of OCR than Google Docs which saves a lot a time. OneNote can be installed in Ubuntu with Wine, PlayOnLinux or CrossOver Microsoft Windows compatibility layer.