I use a form comprising of fields for entering name, date of birth etc. The rest of the form is simply lined - all information is currently handwritten.

I'd like to be able to scan and input the information by keyboard and print.

I've tried using Paint, but selecting BOXES accurately on EVERY line is laborious and the whole thing looked a bit messy. I'd like to be able to position the cursor and type.

I don't have Microsoft Office Document Imaging, but I'm not even sure that's the sort of software I need.

Can anyone advise me please what software will do the job I want to do?

Many thanks
Are you familiar with OCR? It stands for optical character recognition program. This program is usually bundled with SCANNER driver applications.

After scanning the hard copy of your data OCR will create a text document containing the data from scanned materials

Hope this helps.If your goal is to replace your pen and paper version of the form with one that is fillable and printable on the computer, I suggest using your word processor program to create a fillable form or a document template. Both Microsoft Word and the free Open Office suite have instructions for doing this. This would require you to essentially recreate your form on the computer, using your paper form as a guide.

If you must retain the exact appearance of your paper form, I suggest scanning the form and inserting it as a watermark in a document template you would create in your word processor. On top of this watermark background you could insert borderless transparent text boxes POSITIONED over each text field and formatted to your desired font and size. Each time you open a new document from this template you will be able to TAB from one text box field to the next and fill the form, save and/or print it.