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Scanning documents to store on your PC is easy, but if you want to edit these documents you need optical character recognition (OCR) software.
OCR software analyses scanned documents so you can treat them just like one you have typed in a word processor.
Although scanning text into an editable form needs clever software, Abbyy has tried to keep it simple. The Scan&Read wizard makes the whole process as easy as possible. After scanning the page to your hard disk, the wizard 'reads' or analyses the scanned document and from that information creates an editable document.
The next stage allows you to check the document. If it is riddled with errors, you can switch from the wizard to use manual zoning to tidy it up. OCR software divides a page into zones during analysis so text, pictures and tables should be in different zones.
It doesn't always work perfectly so you can manually change these so the borders are more clearly defined. Afterwards you can start the wizard again and the scan-reading results should be much improved.
The wizard then allows you to save the file in a variety of formats.
FineReader performs well, converting pages of text into editable documents with very few errors. More complex pages give worse results but are still a marked improvement on the previous version. This is particularly true in its reproduction of tables.
FineReader 6 is a good OCR application. If you've bought an OCR package in the past year or so, however, you probably won't see a huge improvement by switching to FineReader.
Price: £70Contact: Abbyy 01279 323766
www.abbyy.com
Also consider:
SCANSOFT OMNIPAGE PRO 11
Good OCR package that costs £100 as an upgrade.
Price:£435
See also:
Convert paper documents into editable digital files in just a few mouse clicks. 18 Nov 2002
Tools for converting paper forms into digital forms and for creating digital forms from scratch. 25 Apr 2002
All Office Applications
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