How to Search Text in Images (OCR) on Windows

You took a screenshot of an error message. You photographed a whiteboard after a meeting. You scanned a receipt for expense tracking. Now you need to find that image again, but all you remember is a few words that were in it.

Windows treats images as visual files. It knows the filename, the date, and the dimensions, but it has no idea what text appears inside the image. To search for text in images, you need OCR.

What Is OCR?

OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. It is a technology that analyzes an image, identifies shapes that look like letters and numbers, and converts them into actual text that a computer can read, search, and copy.

OCR has been around for decades, but it used to require expensive specialized software. Today, Windows has basic OCR built in, and tools like FileScope use it automatically to make your entire image library searchable.

Common use cases for OCR

• Screenshots of error messages, settings, or conversations
• Photos of whiteboards or handwritten notes (printed text works best)
• Scanned documents like contracts, receipts, and letters
• PDFs from scanners that contain images of pages, not text
• Business cards and labels photographed with your phone

Method 1: Windows Snipping Tool (Copy Text)

The Windows 11 Snipping Tool includes a "Text actions" feature that can extract text from a screenshot.

Steps:

1. Open the Snipping Tool (search for it in the Start menu)
2. Take a screenshot or open an existing image
3. Click the Text actions button in the toolbar
4. The tool highlights recognized text. Click Copy all text to copy it to your clipboard

Limitations:

• Only works on one image at a time
• You must manually open each image
• Does not make your images searchable. It just copies text from the current image
• Only available on Windows 11 with recent updates
• No integration with file search

Method 2: Microsoft PowerToys Text Extractor

PowerToys is a free utility collection from Microsoft. Its Text Extractor tool lets you select any area of your screen and extract the text.

Steps:

1. Install Microsoft PowerToys from the Microsoft Store or GitHub
2. Enable Text Extractor in the PowerToys settings
3. Press Win+Shift+T (default shortcut)
4. Draw a rectangle around the text you want to extract
5. The recognized text is copied to your clipboard

Limitations:

• Works only on what is currently visible on screen
• Cannot search through saved images or files
• One-time extraction only, does not index or store the text
• Requires you to know which image contains the text you want

Method 3: OneNote OCR

Microsoft OneNote has a lesser-known OCR feature. When you paste an image into a OneNote page, it processes the image and makes the text searchable within OneNote.

Steps:

1. Open OneNote
2. Create a new page or open an existing one
3. Paste or insert the image
4. Wait a moment for OneNote to process the image (it runs OCR in the background)
5. Right-click the image and select "Copy Text from Picture"
6. You can also use OneNote's search (Ctrl+E) to find text within pasted images

Limitations:

• You must manually paste every image into OneNote
• OCR processing can take seconds to minutes
• Only works within OneNote, not system-wide
• Requires a Microsoft account for synced notebooks
• Not practical for searching across hundreds of images on your drive

Method 4: Online OCR Tools

Various websites offer free OCR services where you upload an image and get the extracted text back.

Popular options:

• Google Drive (upload image, then open with Google Docs)
• onlineocr.net
• newocr.com

Limitations:

• Requires uploading your images to a third-party server
• Privacy risk: your screenshots and documents are sent to the cloud
• One image at a time
• Requires internet connection
• Not integrated with your file system
• Cannot batch-process an entire folder

Method 5: FileScope (Automatic OCR Indexing)

FileScope takes a fundamentally different approach. Instead of making you extract text from one image at a time, it automatically OCRs every image in your watched folders and stores the extracted text in a searchable index.

How it works:

1. Download and install FileScope
2. Add the folders containing your images (Screenshots, Desktop, Documents, etc.)
3. FileScope automatically detects images (PNG, JPG, BMP, TIFF) and runs OCR on each one using the Windows native WinRT OCR engine
4. Extracted text is stored in the local database alongside the file metadata
5. Press Ctrl+Space from anywhere and type what you remember
6. FileScope returns the images that contain matching text

Real-world examples

Finding an error message: You took a screenshot of a Python traceback three weeks ago. Search for "ModuleNotFoundError" and FileScope finds the screenshot instantly.

Finding a receipt: You photographed a lunch receipt for expense reporting. Search for the restaurant name or the total amount and the photo appears in the results.

Finding meeting notes: You took a photo of a whiteboard with project milestones. Search for "Q3 deadline" or any phrase written on the board.

Finding a code snippet: You screenshotted a Stack Overflow answer. Search for a function name or keyword from the code and FileScope finds it.

Technical details

FileScope uses the Windows WinRT OCR engine, the same engine that powers the Snipping Tool's text extraction. The difference is that FileScope runs it automatically on every image, not one at a time.

The OCR runs locally on your machine. No images are uploaded to any server. Processing happens in the background with a concurrency limit of 5 images at a time to keep CPU usage reasonable. New images added to watched folders are automatically detected and OCR-processed.

On top of OCR, FileScope also applies semantic AI search. This means you can describe what you are looking for in natural language, and FileScope will find images with matching content even if the exact words differ.

Comparison

Conclusion

If you need to copy text from a single image right now, the Snipping Tool or PowerToys Text Extractor work well. If you want all your screenshots, scans, and photos to be automatically searchable, FileScope is the only tool that does this locally on Windows. It OCRs your images in the background, indexes the text, and lets you find any image by searching for words that appear in it.

For more on searching inside all file types, see our guide on how to search files by content on Windows or compare the best file search tools for Windows.