Jon Galloway

Jon Galloway combines Timesnapper (Tivo for geeks) with the OCR abilities of Microsoft Office Document

Thanks alot...very handy!

Wow!  I can't believe that I didn't know about that before now.  That is going to be a huge time-saver.

Top stuff Jon.

Yeh I've been tinkering with that MODI codeproject sample for a while now.

Simple OCR is scheduled for TimeSnapper 2.2. Can't wait to have it in there.

Other features (including extensible callouts during archiving -- which you requested!) are going to be done first though. But OCR is my favourite feature, particularly for the 'don't lose my data' type usages that you've done so much.

thanks again for the support!

lb

You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from DotNetKicks.com

I've been using MS Office OneNote 2007 for a while, and it includes text recognition too. It's really cool: you rip a screen shot and have OneNote OCR it so you can copy and paste recognized text.

Hi: I tried the "Microsoft Office Document Imaging" tool on what was essentially a spreadsheet.  Unfortunately, it lost the column positioning information.  So

a b c

a - d

a e -

(where the dashes represent blanks)

comes out like

a

a

a

b

e

c

d

¡Gracias Jon!

¡Un excelente aporte!

Great! Solved my OCR problems. Yes, the text wasn't perfect, but it works. thanks

i need this software

Tell you the truth, don't quite dig all the lingo. Just like to know if this "Microsoft Office Document Imaging" (or any other free OCR you could recommend) is useable in my old Win 98 SE puter. How to get it?

As there's no hint given, I imagine tho' that your solution is probably only OK in Win XP ( I mean, what idiot would still be tied to W98 in this day and age, right? Well, how about retired & broke and still on dial-up - occasionally?).

Thanks for your ear,

Jed...jedtimmer(remove this)@lycos.com

Love it didnt know my lame computer had it.

we want to ocr software

Any chance to use MODI on a server for ASP.NET? E.g. through the new Office Server?

plse send the free OCR

ayyappan

Hei,

I have a PDF image file of documents on a couple of CD's of course notes.

Any idea of how I can convert the whole disc using OCR to make the file searchable. I know they sell the software but I would like it for free for a one off job.

regards

rn

THANKS BRILLIANT STUFF JON.

it is good software

Great tip on free OCR  Jon.  But I'm wondering if MODI works well for selections on multiple pages with images.  Whenever an image is included in a page, the copied sections look smudged.  Any idea why this happens?

I tried you directions leaning the Cropper out & it worked much better than my HP scanning ocr. Thanks for your advice!

Hi Jon.

Very good! Thanks for sharing it!

I've felt it strange that there was no 'poor mans' ocr among all the programs on the pc.

Yes Jon, this OCR worked better than GOCR (http://www.about280.com/gocr/setup.zip),

ScreenOCR (http://www.screenocr.com/screenocr.exe) and OCRTools_Utility.exe (http://www.ocrtools.com/downloads/OCRTools_Utility.exe).

Thanks jon. Very useful information. I did have it in my computer and I didnt know.

Thanks for the info...  Worked like a champ and didn't even need to download any shareware!

Thanks!  This just made one of my users very happy.

One of those weird corners of the computer I never wander into...

Excellent John,

This unsuspected windows OCR software saved my day !

Nicolas

Rio de Janeiro

Yep - Great find.  You made my day and saved me tons of time & money!

Thanks

Balki

plse send the free OCR

The people who reply "send the free OCR" must not be that good with English, or else they didn't actually read the article.

He said, "You may already have it...". He did not say he could give it to you.

He also said, "It's included Microsoft Office Tools ("Microsoft Office \ Microsoft Office Tools" folder in the start menu, default installation location is "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MODI\11.0\")."

It's included with Microsoft Office. It is not actually free, per se, but included with Office, which most people already have.

Thanks alot for sharing...it works :D

urgent

to help me in my work

Believe it or not ,  the OCR from microsoft will not recognize handwriting . I have a hello word recognition to the software ( MS Document Imaging) and it failed miserably.

however it is fairky good enough when doing a screen shot " this is the output I got after I took a screen shot of the very same window

"Leave a Comment

Title (required)

Ire: Free OCR software? You may already have it..

Name (required)

Avi

Your URL (optional)

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Belive it or not , the OCR from microsoft will not recognize handwriting . I have a hello word recognition to the software ( MS Document Imaging) and it failed miserably.

F Remember Me?

Submit]

"

hmmmm i'm getting install issues....apparently i don't have m4561414.cab. oh well! adobe acrobat pro 7~!

This is without a doubt, the most outstanding info ever.....

I Love You Jon !!! :)

Thank you very much for this gift. You really made my day too.

Excellent guide.  Dont realise MS Office come with OCR with Imaging Viewer.  My job is done in 5 minutes Yeah!

Excellent stuff...thanks alot...it saves my lots and lots of time...

great

OCR software

Thanks this is a life saver!! See thats the problem with Microsoft, they don't really tell you about all the hidden extras in XP!

I am glad I am getting my moneys worth!!

I had a problem when I started using the program. It said the network source was unavailable. I put in the XP disk and tried several avenues to solve the problem but nothing worked. Any ideas to help me??? Apparently I need something that contains the pro11.msi installation package, which I thought I had, but it isn't working.

Where can I get this Office Document Imaging? Are you saying that it's in the installation software?? I have an image - jpg pasted on PDF that I need to scan, will it work for this thing?

Unfortunately it doesn't go back as far as my edition of ms office: 2000.

Jon,

Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge... it was extremely helpful, and I really appreciate it.

`Michael

I want a ocr software

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I really appreciated your detailed info. Thanks a million.

Fantastic information. Your advice to use MODI was a God-send.  I thought I was going to have to dig in my pocket and buy OCR to use with MAC OS-X.  Instead, I was able to scan the document to a PDF on the MAC transfer it to my PC and used the MODI (once I found it on my system) and I am now editing the 15 page document, instead of re-typing it.

Thanks for the help.

God bless ya, brother, for passing this on.  Huge help.

please send the free OCR

Awesome tip!  MS Office Document Scanning works too, and automatically runs the OCR conversion.

Thank you very much for this helpful page, MS Office Document Imaging did the job !!!

You probably havent tried Tesseract lately. It has a Windows GUI and installer and V2 has just been released that supports different languages.

Its worth a look www.softi.co.uk/tess.htm

I just did the following test: take a screenshot of Tesseract's download page and save as an image. Try using MS Office 2003 and try Tesseract to turn the screenshot into text. Terreract barely got 10 letters right. MS Office missed 1 letter on the whole page. I know which one I'm picking.

Many thanks, my canon scanner 8000F wouldn't OCR (too old bundled software, Omnipage 2002 to be updated by miserly scansoft)Fortunately Office  2003 worked if you know how to find it

Thank you so much for posting this. The information you shared helped us out! Thanks again!

Thank you from me too! This has really been of assistance to me. At present I have a problem with my HP software, (or rather with my XP -The Win16 Subsystem was unable to enter Protected Mode, DOSX.EXE must be in your AUTOEXEC.NT and present in your PATH..is the error message when I try to load the scanjet software) which I can't solve, however, checked out and tried the MS MODI OCR last night and found it is excellent! Thanks VERY MUCH!

Thanks a lot buddy

We are on Office 2002 here at work and MODI does not have OCR capabilities.  Instead it offers you an upgrade "deal" to buy OmniPage OCR software.  The info offered thru the supplied links in the MODI help screens is stale; the current deal is for OmniPage Pro 16 (there is no "non-Pro" version, btw) offered thru Nuance for $100.

I'm so glad I stumbled upon this after looking at various dodgy free downloads (I lost the disk with free OCR that came with my scanner). Sure enough, the funny little app was just where John said it was, and it works really well. Problem: wife with very old computer, no internet connection, no means of transferring files from it to my machine, wants to send an email. Solution: print the text, scan and OCR to Word on my computer, paste into email client and away we go. Brilliant!

Jon Galloway... THANK YOU SIR! Thats all I have to say.

This is not free though, deceptive. The price for Office was in your computer. Many cheaper models come without it.

For me it didn't work. The scanner scanned the document MFC 210C and then I got the message:

The scan failed because of a scanner hardware error. Feeder may be jammed. Please correct the error and scan again.

Ray

incredible, incredible, incredible!!! Thank you so much!!!

Thanks a ton for the posting Jon. Its a revelation worth commendation.

You have saved me hours of work. So much quicker than text bridge. Thanks so much

How do I look for "free OCR software" on my computer if I have it.

Hi Jon, Thanks. I looked yesterday for hours to find a simple and a good one and was already to pay. And it was on my computer! Just what I needed. Thanks again.

Pierre-Antoine

hi, i really want to have it in order to complete my final project of BSCS. Thanks!!!

Thanks Jon, I downloaded some free software which was not very good and then I found this link and discovered it was on my machine the whole time.

You are a star

thank you

Angi Wren

I use my MODI to scan documents, mag articles, etc.  I scan from MODI instead of my HP's scanning program because of the ease of transferring to Word.

One important point that you did not mention for people scanning files instead of pasting them is the .mdi extension.  Use this for ease of transfer of text to MS applications.

Unfortunately, either way you export to Word, the accuracy is still not that great.  It's good enough for home use with some corrections that need to be made, but if you need to edit a document while keeping the document intact, then you'll have to buy a retail version.  PLEASE let me know otherwise because I would greatly appreciate it.

Jon, You Da Man!!

Thanks for what was under my nose all the time.

Ed

Man you saved my weekend!  I had to transcribe a report made on a typewritter...

Thanks alot

That's brilliant.  Thanks a lot.

It doesn't do well on columns of numbers.

Thanks for the help

i want to scan spanish and english image files and text files also and i need to return text using ocr

Hi Jon!

Thanks a lot for your tip. I was looking for free OCR software and didn't find one that would work but MODI did. I just tried it out with a spanish text ant it worked good. Not perfect and the page format was lost, but with a little editing it was done ... in much lesser time than retyping the whole.

cheers mate - ur a legend bro

PARA ESTUDIANTE DE NIVEL MEDIO BACHILLER MEXICO

Just tried the Microsoft Office 2003 package as described above for OCR.  When I loaded my scanned document in TIF and clicked on the eye button to OCR it, the software said that i needed to install another part of the software for that function.  Unfortunately I do not have the CD for the software so that is a no go for me.  I found some programs i did not know I had though.

¿A qué no sabían que Microsoft Office incluye una solución relativamente buena de OCR, Optical Character

It scans well.  However you have to select the twain option on your printer in the options box or you will get the error message.

Also, IT WILL ALIGN ALL OF YOUR TEXT LEFT AND YOU CANNOT CHANGE IT WITHOUT CHANGING THE WHOLE DOCUMENT. So if you're document is all aligned left, then it works great.

www.structurise.com/kleptomania

Best wishes

Thanks so much for sharing this information! I'm in the same boat you were in. You've saved me so much time!

I used it with XP, but now have Vista.  I appears that it is not possible with this OS.  I have MS Office Word, Publisher, Excel, Powerpoint...but it appears no OCR.  Did Microsoft eliminate it in the newest version for Vista?

Thank-you very much for sharing this helpful information!  Your time posting these details has saved your readers so much more of their time.  

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Saved me hours.

Do you think you'll ever stop getting kudos on this one?!?? I don't think you should - THANKS HEAPS

I need the ocr software if possible. My email is sidik928@gmail.com

I need OCR Software freeware

You are my hero!!!

I just need a trail version of OCR.

There it was under my nose all this time, as you say it works brilliantly, thanks.

I LOVE you!!! Sharing this knowledge has saved me hours of work.

Hi Jon,

  Please check out TopOCR, at www.topocr.com.  This is free OCR for your digital camera, it works quite well, and let's you use your cameras on your cellphone as a scanner.  You can save to PDF or other formats, even text to speech and MP3

It can on occasion get formidable to divide the reliable used office supplies data from the abominable.

I don't have it... why??? :(

Brilliant. Omnipage doesn't document its OLE interface since its version 14 and all the good OCR SDK versions (Omnipage, ABBYY, etc) can cost into the 1000's to automate OCR for your own needs.

Worked a treat. Thanks!

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This is fantastic.  Thanks!

Worked great except I can't figure out how to get the output back into the rows and columns it was in.

I just used tesseract, through a frontend, called gscan2pdf, see gscan2pdf.sourceforge.net

I am very impressed by the results. Ok, the page layout has not been preserved, but the percentage of wrong characters was very low. I feel this program would come in handy to fill a gap which still exists in the Unix world.

At the same time, I concur, that gocr is mostly useles.

Just a tip, if you have Office 2007, it isn't installed by default and you have to add it through add/remove programs and change Microsoft Office.

MS Office tip worked ABSOLUTELY FANTASTICALLY! Thanks for being my life-saver today!

Thanks for this - saved a lot of time

Note that in OFFICE 2007 (aka OFFICE 12) you must install this sub component.

Go to add/remove programs, change install, then look under..

- Office Tools

- Microsoft Office Document Imaging.

You *MUST* enable all the subcomponents to get MODI. Change them all to "Run From My Computer". The executable you want end sup in..

C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\MODI\12.0

Brilliant!  Tried SimpleOCR to extract text from a PDF screenshot - terrible results! The Office XP software works flawlessly and it was there on my machine all along.  Huge timesaver.  Thank you.

To recap much from the previous posts:

1) This is a sub-program of MS Office 2003+; you must own MS Office; it must be installed via advanced options, it is not part of the default install.  You have to have the program discs to do this.  [Don't have them?  Hmmm... yours is a pirated copy, perhaps?]

2) It does not retain columns.  Lots of other stuff it won't do; remember, MS doesn't even advertise that it is part of Office, so don't expect Nuance Textbridge or ABBYY Finereader, just be happy if you have it and it works for you.

3) It is not an optical handwriting recognition program, unless you are an engineering or architectural draftsman old enough to have learned draftsman script.  My father could have done this, maybe.  Me?  Not a chance!

I want Free OCR to complete my project of HandWritting Recognition System.

   Plz send its code to my e-mail.

      Thanking in anticipation.

Brilliant tip - many thanks.  I hope someday I (or one of the many benefactors) can reciprocate your kindness in some manner for sharing such valuable info with us.

Not only does text capture from a PDF introduce weird formatting glitches, it's also possible for a PDF to have security settings such that you arte not allowed to capture text from it.  In that case, doing an image capture from the screen of an enlarged image of the PDF, converting that to TIF and using the Office OCR should work just fine.  However, be advised that if the PDF has such security settings, then working around them may be a violation of the owners copyright.

Hey - thanks for this info! I never thought to see if MSOffice had something like. I actually assumed it didn't lol.

I was searching online for a tool to download and came across your post, and now I'm scanning in this 30 page doc and it's coming out as a word doc. Thanks for the tip dude! much appreciated!

Thanks... saved me the search and evaluate time

Have you tried simpleOCR (www.simpleocr.com). It is free and fairly effecttive.

Cheers

Just great. Thanks a bunch

I have Modi\12 in Vista but I can not create edible text.

Any suggestions?

Thanks, brilliant software that i didn't even know i had!

Thanks for ur comment. I too didnt know that I have.

Thank u very much.

Hey thanks,  Only one complaint, it doesn't keep the formatting.  Any idea if there is a way to keep the formatting?

Hi Jon.

A really useful post which google pushed to the top of the list... wonderful!

Many thanks indeed.

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Coool, over a year later and your great post keeps on giving, thanks

Just installed an all-in-one printer on my system at work and wondereed what I was going to do when I discovered it didn't come with OCR software. Question answered: turns out I had MODI installed all along.  Thanks loads for ferreting this out.

Had a problem transfering vendor PDF quotes in Excel format. Now you gave me the solution via Word! Took me 5 minutes finding the solution on the web (first topic with GOOGLE) and giving back the document to the owner.

That's what I call a quicky! ;o)

Continue your good work!

Thats frekin awesome! - Thanks. Just what I needed. Found it straight away thanks to google!

Thanks Jon.  You have provided very crucial information!

Wow..thank you so much this is going to help a lot.  Wonderful product (considering is free), that I just never new it existed!

As well as I thought I knew the Microsoft suite... I've learned something new today. Thanks a bundle!

Great tip!!! Awesome!!!

Thanks for the tip.  I used the windows search feature for "microsoft windows image" and it automatically found the shortcut...did not have to go into the folders.

Thank you for this great tip. I really appreciate it. Have a very nice day and a happy new year.

please send me a e mail as how to find the free OCR

^^ Read the article, dummy.

Thank you for the gread TIP! ;)

SAVES A LOT OF WORK.. that i used to have with previous versions of various scanner software, and it's "free" (if we already have the Microsoft Office Software)

Great tip !!!  You saved me a lot of time and hassle.  You rock !

YOU'RE MY HERO! Thanks so much for posting your findings.

Bless you!

I run Vista Ultimate and lots of Hp software with Photoshop and never knew I had ocr software from HP until I read your article and began to dig.

I don't use MS office but I use OpenOffice freeware and it doesn't have OCR capabilities.

I found mine under HP on this path:

"C:\Program Files\HP\Digital Imaging\DocProc\hpDocCvt.exe"

It took a bit of time to get it to run with the scanner and Photoshop but it runs great now!

If anyone tries it this way you have to scan at a very high dps, mine wouldn't convert to text until 1200dps tif format.

Thanks so much for this article!

VaL in Texas

I Need OCR software for PDf to Word Converting

This is really useful. Thank you.

You can even do this in a single step. If you click send to word, it rotates the image and does the ocr before the export.

I don't know about this OCR software...I call it BUTCH

You just saved me 50 minutes of of my life which I'd have spent typing... Two words: thank you.

It works! I can;t beleive it I was in town in three computer software stores and they didn't seem to lnow what I was talking about the last one finaly found something on the net and offered to order it but i declined and started to goggle and soon found I had it thanks to you and it works just like I wonded it to

Wow, that's great and very useful as already said.

Thanks a lot.

Since it's so useful I added hear my own Tip for using it…

I use it for technical text reading with a 'Read Out Loud' programs such as 'TextAloud' (with sound engine from AT&T such as Crystal16).

Although the PDF got inside a 'Read Out Loud' option, there is a problem in controlling the speed of the reading (slowing it down) and putting different pronunciation for words like abbreviations or other terms. But the main problem is that most PDF Technical documents are locked and the PDF 'Read Out Loud' option works on them for full pages and not sections or user text selection. At this point I use the OCR conversion…

So to get the computer to read the text from a problematic PDF I do the following

1. Press the keyboard Print screen button ('PrtScr') on the requested text.

2. Paste it to the MS paint.

3. With the ms paint 'select' tool, I select (graphic selection) the part of the text I want to hear and copy or cut it out (Ctrl-C/Ctrl-X).

3. Paste it in the MSPVIEW + exporting it to word processor

4.  On the Word processor select the text and with an edited/configured shortcut key combination I copy paste it to the 'TextAloud' program that automatically read it the way I configured it and with the word pronunciation I use to hear.

Well maybe it's long and clumsy but it works for me, saving me the time in understanding.

Thanks again, I hope it'll help some one…

can't see for looking now can i absolutely great

many thanks

How about that! Worked perfectly the first time I scanned the document. Cost zero.

If you don't want to install Tesseract you can still OCR documents for free with it on A Billion Billion, www.abillionbillion.com/.../free-ocr-for-everyone. All you have to do is upload your TIFF documents and then click OCR Document.

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This tip was a lifesaver!  I had some scanned POD's from an international shipment that I needed to verify with a master Excel file.  Manually, this would have taken hours.  Your tip using MS Office took the scanned .pdf (from an original tiff) and converted perfectly.  The original was 6 pages of waybills.  Copy, paste, vlookup, and BAM!

Thanks!!!

Good find - thanks! Has anyone figured out how to convert HANDWRITING to text?

In Windows Vista Premium I'm running Office Home and Student 2007.  It does not have Microsoft Office Document Imaging, AFAICT.  However it does have a feature in OneNote that serves the purpose.  I found I can paste or otherwise import an image containg text into a OneNote page, right click on it and choose "Copy Text from Picture"... then simply paste the copied text wherever you'd like it.

Of course, it's not perfect OCR for low resolution.  But IMO it does pretty good (but I only have minimal experience with OCR software).  For instance, I used Vista's Snipping Tool to capture the first paragraph in Jon's Microsoft Office Document Imaging section.  Below is the result:

"On accident, I stumbled across Microsoft Office Document Imaqin. Its included Microsoft Office Tools

(‘Microsoft Office \ Microsoft Office Tools folder in the start menu, default installation location is “C:\Program

Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MODI\1 1.OV’). The interface looks a “My First VB5 Application’ reject, but it

works great."

I love you. I used to have Text Bridge. This is so much easier and better to use and it's free.

Go the web and go you - for taking your time. IF you were here next to me I'd give you a big soggie kiss right now. :)

Yoav.

Thanks a lot!  This save me so much time and money as well.

Great post!!!!

Very cool, thanks, saved me heaps of time

I have it, and it's working fine on English and Danish, but doesn't seem to work on German. I copied from a PDF file.

Thank you. It's a lifesaver!

Jon and especially Joe Hren get my undying gratitude.  Nuance wouldn't update my too-old Omnipage when I moved to Vista.  Who'd guess a comment in an unknown (to me) blog somewhere on the vast net could save me $150 or more and many hours of frustration! And it was all about a right-click! You're my Valentines.

Sir,

i Need one OCR Software . for scanning the image ....

if is available please let me know.

Regards

Ajith

Mangalore

Ph: +91 9845557668

Email:ajit@binaryindia.com

ajitok@rediffmail.com

Thank You so much - it was very helpful.

Vytenis,Kaunas city, Lithuania, Europe

This was very useful as everyone I think agrees.  One slight improvement: if you want to OCR and entire multipage PDF file, open in Adobe Reader and print using the printer "Microsoft Office Document Image Writer"; this will save a .mdi file and automatically open MS Office Document Imaging, from where you can OCR the entire doc.  Hope this helps.

I'm still running Office 2000, so I don't have this option, and my old copy of Omnipage 10 anymore doesn't save as PDF.  Still, I know I got I.R.I.S. OCR software with my HP all-in-one scanner/printer.  Until today, though, I haven't been able to figure out how to make it work except when I was scanning a new image.  I have several existing image files on my computer which I'd like to convert to text.  Reading these comments got me digging, and in MY case the answer was found in C:\Program Files\HP\Digital Imaging\DocProc\dpe_ocr.exe.  It works well for me, and since this seems to be becoming a catch-all for "you may already have it" solutions, I thought I'd share it here.

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Anyone buying a new PC will also have Adobe Acrobat Standard bundled, and can use the OCR capabilities of this software.  Article on how at:

<a href="www.scanguru.com/.../content.php

ScanGuru Adobe abnd OCR</a>

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Thanks a lot. Solved my problems

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Well done Jon! Thank you for posting this

This is very handy.  I had been retyping text from image PDF -- but no more!  Thanks.

Built a full links page of just about every OCR application I could find.  There are some freeware and open source apps as well:

www.scanguru.com/.../links.php

If I missed any, send me a note, and i will add them.

Thanks for the tip, I was unaware that I already had OCR software!!! MS Document Imaging worked great.

I just bought Office 2007, (the version with PP, Excel, Outlook Express) I didn't get the one with OneNote.

The install appears to have zapped my Microsoft Document Imaging (my fault for not paying attention). I can't find it anywhere.

Any suggestions on how to fix that? Maybe uninstall, reinstall Office 2003 then reinstall Office 2007 but don't upgrade?

Who knows, I'm quite irked about it.

Am I missing something here? Just doesn't seem right.

GREAT ARTICLE!! Thank you.

Even More!!! If you have PDF Writer or PDF995 installed you could Click on Print and save in PDF Format.

THANK YOU!!!!!!!

Nice one, thanks you saved me time and money

Thank you so very much for the information. The Microsoft program did the job without the expensive costs, as it was already on my system. Awesome.

This was great. I used it on a copy-protected PDF (had to use alt-PrtScrn to grab image) and the OCR quality was almost perfect. Saved me hours of retyping!

some people desreve public recognition . yourare definitely one of them. thanks for making my life easier.

lorrie

MICROSOFT WORD FTW!?!?!?!?!?!?

worked amazing!!!

Thanks for posting this. You have made my typing life so much easier.

I tried using the Microsoft Office Document Imaging as you suggested. It did not work for me, like it did for you...but I did not have "cropper". But what I did discover thanks to your article...is Microsoft Office Document Scanning located right underneath the Microsoft O D Imaging. It does it all. It uses your scanner and automactically runs the OCR...then it pasted it directly into the Microsoft O D Imaging. Then I clicked on the Export to Word toolbar button as you suggested and it worked! Thanks a bunch!

Excellent. A job I was about to hate turned into a breeze. From PDF to text. Thank you.

It seems to be great software just what I need. Where do I get it? I searched my system and its not there can it be downloaded anywhere? I have searched and searched and could not find it!!

This was of great help, thanks!

May already be in these comments somewhere, but to copy a table into a spreadsheet, highlight and copy a column at a time after running OCR. Crude but works; it had a little trouble with dates is all.

Thanks, that was exactly what I needed!

Many thanks.

thank you very much! this made life bit easier-- may god bless you!!!

Thanks - you obviously have a hit blog here - great

Hi,

Just like Pat Wilson, I also have a problem opening my excel files.  A window installer pops up and then says that the network source is unavailable.  It will then ask for PRO11.msi which I don't have in my computer.  I don't have my windows operating disk as well. Where can I get this PRO11.msi thing?  Thanks.  

Thanks Dear, you have done a great job for me at least.

Thanks Again

Please send me the free OCR software.

Just kidding.  Great tip, I had no idea it was there.

very nice, but one thing if i want to retain the page layout for example i scan a document with table on it and i want to retain the table.. can i use document imaging? it would be a great help for me..

my lexmark printer did the automatically before but i cant get it to do it again but now i can do it this way thxs

if u have adobe acrobat pro, it also has an ocr. nothing beats abbyy reader though, it's better than omnipage, which is more expensive.

Jon, my thanks to you! I was looking for an OCR program I used to have packaged with a translation program and couldn't find it; a Google search led me here. Awesome! Thanx for sharing this tip!

This is awesome and works great.  I do have to scan each page and manually assemble the pieces, but the character recognition is superb compared to the other two downloaded programs it tried.  I have not had to do any tweaking! thanks !

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Nice one, exactly what I was looking for - GENIUS!!!

yes, you are GENIUS! thanks...

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PARKO 18-68

11206, VILNIUS

LITHUANIA

It's really cool for OCR. But how i can perform OCR/ICR on the scanned image of a handwrittened document? Again how i can select an area on a MODI document using code(not by manual selection). Please help.

Didn't windows abandon microsoft imaging and replace it with microsoft photo editor in windows XP?  Microsoft document imaging does not show up on my work computer with windows 2000 or on my XP laptop.  If it comes with OFFICE, what version of office do I need?

Thanks much for the tip. I have OCR software that came with my scanner, but I didn't want to install the whole scanner suite at this time. This tip saved me a lot of time. Sweet!

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Very interesting finding out about that MS tool. Incidentally, not all Office Suites will have the MS Office Business Tools. I think you need at least Office Pro.

Just tested it out with a Table of Contents page. But looks like the only way to capture the recognized text is to export it to Word. When I tried to save it directly, it just re-saves the image. And as others have noted, it lost the column formatting. It stripped all the dots in my ToC.

That and the fact that it accepts only single page image files makes it a crippled program. It may work in a pinch, but not acceptable for production work.

If you have Acrobat (not just the reader), it has OCR function too so you don't have to extract each page into separate image files. But it requires a minimum resolution of 144ppi.

For those who did not know, it's handy and quick to scan and convert to text documents with ... Nokia N95. Just take a picture with the phone camera (better at max pixel resolution), upload to your PC .jpg's and use OCR software to convert pictures to the text. I use a good old FineReader. The quality almost do not differ from the desktop scanner and takes less time to scan. Chears :)

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Seriously it work soooo cool thx u very much.

You saved my day ! HP only released a basic Vista driver for my older HP Scanjet 3750C. With your trick I didn't have to try (and fail) to install the old XP scanner package. And I don't need the fancy stuff they give with the scanner anyway ... just a waste of HD space.

Pls. send me your OCR software. GOD bless you. Thanx.

thanks a lot and works with office 2007 too.

please send the free OCR software, thx in advance

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Thanks a million! I just wonder why it is kind of a "hidden" option in Ms Office Pack!

I heart you, John Galloway!

Thank you for sharing it

i didn't know that office had that option too!

chris

thanks you so much.. very very helpful.. A posting that is truly noteworthy. made me fall in love with MS office...

Hm, that was a surprise. The Microsoft Office OCR worked very well, but I didn't even know it was there! I was thinking of buying software & saved money thanks to this.

Thank you so much jon. I love it.

Does some one has the experience with E13B font that use in the Code line of cheque?

i need a free download software that will help me convert a handwritten material to a text in microsoft word font style.

i need a free download for a software that can aid a hp scanner in converting handwritten character to a microsoft word character.

Thanks ... this is cool.

This is the Best information! You have made extracting information from a nightmare report, a pleasant dream.

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How can I acheive throu coding in .net. Reading a hand written text from image file like bmp/jpg/jpeg/gif.,etc .

let me know.

pls send any link or idea to this id linguage_23@yahoo.com

Thanks in advance.

I didn't find the software in my office 2007. But if you go back to the control panel, uninstall programs and change the MS office settings so the MS Document Imaging is installed then you can get it.

Just for those who are not too good at finding things on their computer, like me !!

Wow!  Thanks for making me look like a superstar!

I look up tricks to making my life easier on the internet all the time but this is the first time I have ever commented on something I've found... this MODI feature makes me so excited that I now realize what a computer dork I am.

I reiterate what Lauren said... thanks for making me look like a superstar!

I need something that can convert the thoughts in my head into MS Word format?

Can anyone help me.

NEvertheless Mr Jonny - you have broght be a micro-step closer to my dream.

I'm recovering from a disk head crash and lost ancient drivers etc.  Thanks for the tip i.e., free software.  I found it on my machine.

I scanned, select all of type, copied (ctl C)

dropped it into a new WORD document with a ctl-v.  Some format loss but no spelling errors, an improvement over my last OCR software.

Much thanks.

Dude, thanks so much for the info!!

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A fantastic OCR suite. 99% accurate.

I remember using OmniPage in the mid 90's -- with miserable results.  Depending on the font and print quality of the document being scanned, anywhere from 15%-65% of the document would come out as pure gibberish.  Often I would just end up retyping whole pages by hand.  Until today, I had basically given up on OCR technology.

This morning I was sent 17 pages of content to be used on a clients website -- in Bitmap format.  I was copying it out diligently, and estimated it was going to take two hours to plow through this.

So quick web search and I came up with this article. Within 10 minutes I had all 17 pages as textual verbiage in Microsoft Word.  And the interpretation algorithm was flawless!  I kid-you-not, after running it through the spell check in Word, there was only one error, and it turns out that it had been mis-spelt in the original.

I had seen the "MS Office Document Imaging" software in the Office suite before, but had no idea it was an OCR suite.  I think the name is kind of vague [and misleading].  If they called it something more obvious like: the "MS OCR Suite", I would have been using this years earlier.

Thanks again for the tip, this is a massive time saver.

Tks so much. My son offered to help to type some parts of textbk for his blind classmate so that it can be converted to Braille and I told him don't do that yet as I looked for some software to do that job. I've been hunting for abt a wk now and this morning got yours, tried & it worked. Great! May God bless you for sharing.

Thanks for this, works a treat.   I note some guys state used to work on xp but not on Vista.    I use Vista Ultimate and no probs as long as you kept office setup files after installation all OK otherwise it asks to insert disc - office disc but then no probs.  Many Thanks

Yeh good one mate. Saved me some real life drama.

A couple of other useful bits found while using MODI to create a small document imaging and retrieval system.

Document retrieval

MODI stores the OCR words at the end of the tif image file.  Open the tif file in notepad to see them.  

MODI can then be used to search for text in the tif images.  Have not been able to find a consistent way to get google or desktop search to index the tif images.

File naming

The first text scanned can be used to name the tif image.

Put a reference at top left of docs.  Text then number seemed to be the most effective.

Excellent tip, many thanks.

Thank you sir!  I was surprised how well this worked on a pdf of a scanned document someone sent me.  Exported from Acrobat as a tiff and ran it through MODI into Word.  Only one spelling error.  If only it could keep formatting...

Glad to find this useful program hidden on my hard drive.

Microsoft Office Document Imaging works great for text scanning.

Just another thanks for pointing the way to this feature.

Thank you sir!  I was surprised how well this worked on a pdf of a scanned document someone sent me.  Exported from Acrobat as a tiff and ran it through MODI into Word.  Only one spelling error.  If only it could keep formatting...

thanks a lot. just saved my life

The most useful advice I've found in some time.  The MS Office toole worked perfectly.  Thanks so much.

please provide me the link so that i can easily have the free ocr  

I just tried the Windows Document Imaging. I'd used it before but not to do OCR. Now I can  teach my senior students now to do OCR fro free.

Thanks Jon

Sam Pennington

IT teacher

Thanks! This works like a charm. At first I had some troubles when using the copy function of Adobe Reader but when I started to use Cropper it works perfect!!!

Danydin answered: re:HP Officejet 5510 Readiris OCR

Wow. When you said "You may already have it".

I thought why not look into it and give it a chance.

Boy it is a good OCR software. Hardly any errors execpt in a few ALL CAPITAL words.

I spent thousands of (Indian Rs) recently, I wish I new earlier. (1US$ = 46Rs)

Microsoft Office Document Imaging works great for text scanning.

There's also tessnet (www.pixel-technology.com/.../tessnet2), it's open source

men u saved my ass, my boss wud not have found it funny that my report was not ready, i scanned them all. thanks

Found the programme and very impressed with what you can do with it. Many Thanks

You just saved me about 8 hours in my estimation as I have a scanned document 100+ A4 pages in length to convert to text. Thank you and If I ever meet you I will reimburse your for my hourly rate x 8. that seems only fair - You never know who you'll meet in this life buddy. Alternatively give me a po box address and ill send you a check. (no joke) as long as I can verify its you and not someone else on the blog obviously. Send to young.ardent7831@hotmail.co.uk

Very useful, very simple... Thanks a lot for such a simple way to share your experience and knowledge!!!

Thankyou very much buddy!!

Thanks for the idea about Microsoft Office Document Imaging. I didn't know that and it will come in handy in the future. At the moment I need help with converting numbers.

I'm looking for software (OCR/ICR) to convert a scan of rows of numbers. I'm scanning a printout of data from an old survey, so it's just line after line of numbers. I've tried OmniPage and Microsoft Office Document Imaging, but both convert some numbers to letters and also include spaces. I'm looking for software I can control to let it know that there will only be numbers 0-9 and nothing else - no spaces, punctuation or letters. All suggestions welcome.

I love you. You may have saved my degree.

Thanks, this is valuable :)

Microsoft Office Document Imaging is real handy but does not maintain page layout structure.

You try OCR Terminal (www.ocrterminal.com). Its a free OCR Web service that accepts a variety of file formats including multipage PDFs and TIFFs and maintains page layout and formatting while converting to Word files.

We were using Microsoft Office Document Imaging. But..... I'm installing a new Windows Server 2008 (x64) Terminal server. Now the Document Imaging software doesn't work anymore. It is installed (Document Image Writer is no longer installed) but when i start it, it disable the mouse in a TS session (you can move the mouse but you can't click / select anything). The only way to get your mouse back is to close the software by using Alt-F4. Then you have your back. When you try to run the software on your console it freeze your mouse totally. (you can get it back by closing the software using Alt-F4) I've already try to use the compatabillity mode but this doesn't help. Does anybody experience this? Is there a otfix / workaround for this?

nice , i am very interest of this software

My old HP iPaq PDA phone syncs with MS Outlook, and came bundled with Outlook 2002.  The rest of my MS Office installation is Office 2000, which apparently doesn't include Microsoft Office Document Imaging.  When I first went to MODI in the Start Menu, it asked me to insert my Outlook 2002 CD.  After installation, it works like a charm.

Thanks!

Thank you very much! Very usefull idea about Document Imaging tool.

Thursday, May 24, 2007 1:36 PM by MichaelP

Thanks Michael please guide in future also................it will help us a lot....once again THANKS--------VENKY

Top Notch, I thought I knew what office had to offer... Saved me 3 hours work AND I know what to do next time. Thanks

Do you know if it can be automated to scan only a window in the image instead of the whole TIF?

Just another word of THANKS! I've been looking for a free and easy OCR program and one that actually works well for many many years. And this one works in Vista Office by the way. Same place as you described, except it's in folder MODI/12.0. Again, many many THANKS.

I know alot of poeple have expressed thier appreciation for sharing this.  Again, I am joining others to say many many THANKS!!

OK, I'm on the wagon too!!  You just saved me a nice chunk of change!

Just another word of THANKS! I've been looking for a free and easy OCR program and one that actually works well for many many years. And this one works in Vista Office by the way. Same place as you described, except it's in folder  many many THANKS.

Hi all,

frequently I use snapshot for saving my work or some interesting thing and I use my freeware MoreData http://ocrfreeware.somee.com for extracting text from groups of images and freeware SkrenSave for do a snapshot www.gianmarcocastagna.somee.com/Default.aspx,

Regards

Gianmarco

Thank you very much!! I have Office 2007/Vista and needed to add MODI to Office Tools using "Uninstall or Change a Program," but comments from other users helped me to figure this out.

Hi,

I have used this MODI to recognize the characters using VC++ , but the thing is it is not recognizing single character if it is less than 72 char size..... .. please help me to solve this prob............

mail me- kalekar.naresh@gmail.com

can anyone help me.....

thanks in advance....

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I'm using it to take a scanned study guide, grab the text as Q&A for Flashcard Exhange, export it .XLS and use Flash! on PalmOS for portable study.  This is way cool!  Thanks so much!

Well done John. Just like you, I've been searching for free OCR with very limitted success. This ones not fantasticly accurate, but it'll do for me. Thanks

Wow, this works great.  Thank you for the information.  I thought I'd have to buy one to get this done.  You saved me time and $$$

Marilene

i should be needed now

Hey nice one ! Googled this and found your page worked really well - even white on blue from a book jacket - will save me loads of time - thanks friendly.

Nice site thanks!

[url=http://www.gj3kwlkr3sd3.com]simple site[/url].

This is really some kickass info thanks a lot

Yer a legend, mate!

Ta muchly for the clue. I've got happy library staff, now that they don't have to retype blurbs.

Lady H

Perth, Western Australia

Hooray! Had a look around for free OCR software before, and concluded there was none that was usable. Came upon this page today, and it works a treat! Thanks!

Cheers, Jon. Installed it from the CD plugged in my scanner and after a couple of mins of compatablity testing it'll scan a document ad spit it straight to Word.... Job Done. Thanks again.

hi all,

i have added a function accuracy which can replace a cut operation of image to my software "moredata",

you can find it here http://ocr.altervista.org,

regards

gianmarco

Would have been nice if you included some Linux OCR software as well (if any exist out there), but I guess I'll have to ask Google for it or try WINE with these you mentioned ;-) Thanks.

v0=tihberbfv0erobf[-oer]-thgbier]-gt0

What about free ocr for  macs (mac 10.4)

albroth@comcast.net

You Made My Day JON, KUDOS !!!!!!!!!!

Cant thank u guys enough

looking for the best software

Excellent stuff - I needed to extract text from a scanned article that was supplied as a pdf by a client (I couldn't copy the text from the pdf) I converted to .Tif via Photoshop and used the Microsoft Office Document Imaging technique. One (obvious) tip - I found it helped to increase the resolution of the image to convert (300dpi was fine, 72dpi produced 'interesting' results)

Thanks for the Great Tip

Thanks for sharing this. I've had this all along and never had a clue that it could do OCR. It has helped me at work and I didn't have to request a software purchase. God Bless

We were using Microsoft Office Document Imaging. But..... I'm installing a new Windows Server 2008 (x64) Terminal server. Now the Document Imaging software doesn't work anymore. It is installed (Document Image Writer is no longer installed) but when i start it, it disable the mouse in a TS session (you can move the mouse but you can't click / select anything). The only way to get your mouse back is to close the software by using Alt-F4. Then you have your back. When you try to run the software on your console it freeze your mouse totally. (you can get it back by closing the software using Alt-F4) I've already try to use the compatabillity mode but this doesn't help. Does anybody experience this? Is there a otfix / workaround for this?  

Dito, same setup no solution. Need this resolved by MS tbh

Thank you. This advice saved me a whole bunch of time.

You are a gentleman and a scholar. Thank you for this valuable information!

You sir, are a hero!

Small info for those who don't find MODI; I did not at first, then went to MS help pages. For Office 2007, MODI is not installed by default. You want to find you installation CD and select it again in order to install it.

The last thing I need is a software that turns PDF files into image files.

Excelent tip, Thanks,

you may want to try an OCR implementation OVER the Tesseract called:

FreeOCR.net V2.6 Free PDF OCR Software

Last Updated Jan 2009, using the Tesseract engine v2.03

It works smoothky and even reads PDF files

Worked like charm!  Thanks!

I typed in OCR software into Google, and this page was about result number 7 on the hit list - and it deserves to be! Thanks for a really useful article, Jon.  

Thanks! I also didnt kew about it.

i want this software

Thankfully, this is up to #2 on Google's "free ocr" search! Who knew that MS could actually have usable software?

Outstanding! This just saved me hours of research trying to purchase the right product, not to mention the money it will save my company.

Brilliant, Like many here, You've just saved me a lot of time & money. OCR software that came with My New Multi Function Canon Pixma 980 isn't that good but this method will do better.

Thank You,

What if for some reason your version doesn't have Microsoft Document Imaging?  I have 2007 student edition.  Is it possible to get it somehow?

Thanks?

hi jon,

I need your help.

I am searching for a software which will recognise the text in the image file.

I am having over 800 pages of scanned images which are in gif format.. i have tried to use the microsoft office document image writer and it does not recognise even a single character.

it is the same with the abbyy fine reader.

i have not used any other software.

i dont care if it does not preserve the formatting. it is enough if it just recognises the characters.

i am guessing that if the font on the paper is not installed in the computer then no software will recognise the characters. am i right?...

I have Office 207 but no applications under the MODI/12 folder! Also, someone said that Office Onenote 2007 has OCR: I cannot find it there and the Help menu does not tell you anything about it. But thanks anyway!

Quite a useful post. I will check out the Microsoft's Imaging thing.

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Doesn't come with Office 2007 - they've replaced it with Microsoft Ofice Picture Manager. I still have a MODI folder, with a 12 folder below, but there's no .exe file to run it (the folder may be left over from a previous installation of Office 2003 before I obtained the pc).

Very helpful.  Saved me hours of typing.  Any idea whether Office 2008 for Mac has a programme similar to Microsoft Office Document Imaging?   If so, any idea how to access it?

Thanks, I'm surprised Microsoft doesn't advertise this a bit better. For Office 2007 on XP, I went to "Add/Remove Programs", clicked "Change" for Office 2007, and added the Office Document Imaging components. Now MODI is in the start menu (part of Microsoft Office Tools). It works reasonably well and definitely saved me a lot of time.

Ta very much, you have helped me out heaps with this!

This is a great tip. I was just searching the net for info on OCR, and by accident stumbled on your page. I just have to find the easiest way to get table data into Exel.

Good times to all.

I like the OCRTools application. Its free, and it converts the whole image to text, or you can select a portion to convert. The new version is pretty good. Its at www.ocrtools.com

Great, saved me time and money. THANKS A LOT!!

Does this support Japanese characters?

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