scanned document

[Big Al]

My old computer quit on me earlier this year. Prior to this I printed a hard
copy of my resume. After purchasing a new computer I used the all in one
printer to scan my resume. Since then I used my word processor to create an
"office xp word 2003" version of the scanned reume. However when I send the
resume by attachment I get replies that their computer rejected my resume as
a "virus threat." The latest reply said "Our firewall has removed and
destroyed your resume and cover letter as it is in a format that can contain
a self executing file.....Please send as a standard word (ie. .doc,.pdf,.wrd,
..txt) file and not as a .lnk file". This puzzles me since my Computer clearly
says I am attaching a "word" file.Can you explain this?
Also : Related to the above problem I have learned that the scanned
document cannot be edited (even if I save it under a different name). Can you
explain why this happens? Is it possible to save a copy of a scanned document
that can be edited?

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Al,

Your two issues aren't really related except that they're concerned with the
same document.

First deal with the "can't edit" issue, because you can't send an acceptable
document until you *have* an acceptable document...

A scanner -- any scanner -- creates a picture of the scanned page. This file
by its very nature doesn't contain editable text. You need a separate piece
of software called an optical character recognition (OCR) program that
"reads" the picture and figures out what characters are represented. The
output of that program is an editable document. You may have gotten a simple
OCR program with your all-in-one scanner, so look at the CD that came with
the machine. If not, you can try using the Microsoft Document Imaging
program that is part of Office 2003.

When you have an editable document saved on your hard disk, you can attach
it to an email. The relies you got before, if they're accurate, indicate
that you attached a shortcut (with a .lnk extension) and not the actual
file. When you deal with computers for any length of time, you learn that
when software says something "clearly", it doesn't mean it's true. :-( It's
also possible that what you sent was the scanner's picture file (.jpg, .gif,
..bmp) that was mistaken for something else.

In any case, you need to look at the Help for your email program to find out
how to attach a document properly. If you're using Outlook, the command is
Insert > File. When you select the file to attach, make sure it's really the
document and not a shortcut to it (look at the file size -- a shortcut is
only about 1 KB, while a document is at least 20 KB).

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You have undoubtedly scanned the résumé as a picture, and if it is a JPEG,
that may be why it is being rejected (there's currently a JPEG vulnerability
causing worries). To convert it to a true editable Word doc, you need to use
OCR software. Probably a "lite" version of some such software came with your
MFD.