OCR Blues

Author: jawapro
Date: Tue 06/03/2007 11:00 AM




Help - We saved a document - but now we cant find it.

Thats the phone call I got a day or two back. I had a look - but although they claim to have saved the document, it´s completely vanished.

They have a printed copy, and think that´ll be enough - but I happen to be foolish enough to mention that we could probably scan them in using an OCR program so they can edit the text again.

Well - today they decided to take me up on it.

So I had a look around all the free and open source OCR programs I could find - and they all sucked.

Some had about a 50% success rate for converting the scanned document back into text. Some were far less than that.

And then I stumbled across this site that told me that the answer was right under my nose.

Microsoft Office comes with its own OCR program - and compared to the free ones - it totally kicks butt!

If you have Office installed, go Start->Office->Microsoft Office Tools->Microsoft Office Document Scanning

It´ll scan the image, and then find the text in it. You can then click ´Tools->Copy to Word´ and it´ll go and plonk the text straight into a new Word document.

Much better than any of the free ones I found. Only a couple of typos to fix and some formating - it´s great!

Just thought I´d let everyone know in case you ever find yourself in a similar situation.


Comments: 3

 

Comment: 1

Author: Nifen
Date: Wed 07/03/2007 08:42 AM




well... what to say. I guess WOW comes to mind. But then again its not free. does it count :P

 

Comment: 2

Author: turkeybrain
Date: Fri 09/03/2007 12:54 AM




For your information, I have Office 2000 Professional installed, and I looked and cannot see that thing. Does that mean it is only in later versions?

 

Comment: 3

Author: jawapro
Date: Fri 09/03/2007 12:57 AM




Possibly - I am running 2003. I havent looked on anything older. And 28 is right - its not the same as a free piece of software - but I already had it - so thats what I was getting at. And I havent tried the professional packages like OmniPage or anything - but compared to the free ones - the MS app was fantastic.