Thanks for the attempt. I will give it a try.

"MyVeryOwnSelf" <self@emailNot.nul> wrote in message
news:Xns98039C3FC2B29RCLQUSHB976@216.196.97.136...
>>> I have a substantial quantity of tabulated data presented in JPEG
>>> format from scanned hard copies.
>>> The data is typed and "clean".
>>> Is there a freebie utility out there that will "OCR" this data into
>>> .xls format? I appreciate that it will then need careful checking,
>>> but it would still be a lot quicker than typing it all in.
>
>> The scanner most always comes with the OCR program.
>>
>> You cannot "convert" a jpeg to a a text file that Excel could read.
>
> I did an experiment.
>
> Starting with an Excel file containing a rectangular table of random
> numbers, I did:
>
> <Alt-Print Screen>
>
> Paste the image into the "Paint" program
>
> Trim off the extraneous stuff in Paint.
>
> Print from Paint to MS-Office ImageWriter. (To replicate OP's situation, I
> could've started with a jpeg file and printed to ImageWriter.)
>
> In the resulting "Imaging" window, use
> Tools >> Send text to Word
> This made an MS-Word document containing a table.
>
> Copy the table and paste it back into a new blank Excel document.
>
> In this round-about round trip, only about 80% of the numbers were
> correct.
> The problems were primarily recognizing the decimal point. Sometimes it
> was
> omitted; other times, a digit next to the decimal point was turned into a
> letter.
>
> Draw your own conclusions. My conclusion is not to rely on ImageWriter's
> OCR for numerical data. Maybe other OCR programs would be better.