what software can i use (or get 4 free) to edit a scanned document?

MS Office WILL let you do it. It's got OCR software built into it.

You need to install Document Scanning, it's on the MS Office CD but not installed by default.

Go to "Control Panel" from the Windows Start button and select "Add or Remove Programs." Click "Change or Remove Programs" and select your edition of Microsoft Office in the next menu. Click "Change." Click the "+" symbol in front of the "Document Scanning" feature and enable it.

OCR is also built into OneNote if your version comes with that.

Both will let you OCR a scanned image and convert it to Word format.

Your scanenr may have also come with OCR software. Different scanenrs I've owned have come with Presto or TextBridge.

how did you scan your document? is the resulting file a :

-jpeg/jpg -> photo editing sofware

-pdf -> pdf editing software(i.e. nitro pdf)

your sanner's software package should have arrived with an OCR application - this kind of application can detect the text within a scanned document, the final doc being a word file for example. Look within the installed apps on your computer, matbe you already have it. If not, look through your cd;s that came with the scanner.