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Author Topic: OCR software help
Flying Fish
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I am in possession of a lot of old manuscripts (from word processors), mostly in courier font. I would like to convert these to microsoft word and put some on cd's, so I can store them offsite. I have a brother multi-function machine with a scanner, but I have no dedicated ocr software. Also, I'm cheap. I'd like to spend as little as possible. Any ideas.
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BlackBlade
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Can't really help you unfortunately. At my former place of employment they used an program called, "Media Read" but it was developed in house and I'm not certain there is a commercial version of it. Also I imagine it was designed specifically to use the industrial scanners they had on site. If you simply wish to store them, why not scan them and archive the image files?
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scifibum
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Do you have Microsoft Office?

There are also free OCR programs available, including open source. I can't recommend any from personal experience, but download.com offers a few.

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Flying Fish
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I would like to be able to edit them in word format after getting them into the computer. So having pdf files won't do.
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CaySedai
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I don't know if it works for a scanned document, but a regular pdf can be saved as a word document or text. I don't have a scanned pdf to try it on.
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DSH
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Have you checked the Brother support center for software updates to your scanner that include OCR functionality?

My HP all-in-one came with OCR software when I bought it.

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Eduardo_Sauron
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I've been using Abby Finereader for years. It's regarded as one of the best professional OCR softwares, and I'm very happy with using it. Rarely misses a letter. By all means, it costs $199, so I don't know if it's in your price range. As a literature professor, I use it a lot to get large quotations, so it has served me well.
I even had the trouble to try and make it run in my Ubuntu (9.04) box (using wine), because Finereader is sooo good.
By the way: I tried open source ocr softwares, and they don't hold a candle to Finereader.

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rivka
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quote:
Originally posted by DSH:
My HP all-in-one came with OCR software when I bought it.

So did my Brother all-in-one. However, because they changed software partners between now and then, getting replacement software for many of their machines is a royal PITA. Which was a problem when I switched to a new computer, letmetellya!
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