Software to recognize scanned text?

[elkinm]

I would like to know what is the best and/or cheapest simple program to covert text scanned by a scanner into a test or word or some other word processing format?

Also is there any retail scanner software that actually has a feature like this built in so I can scan directly to plain text and not to an image?

Thanks

 

[duragezic]

I believe the software you are looking for is called Optical Character Recognition. I've used one in the past to convert a document I typed on some other computer into a Word file by scanning it. It worked very well. I searched around but I can't remember the name of the program I used. Just search for OCR programs. Most of them cost, but they usually have demos, but how limited the demos are I do not know. Maybe someone will have a recommendation for a good one?

It looks like SimpleOCR is free. Otherwise there is a bunch of this page.

 

[Zepper]

All scanners I'm aware of come with OCR software. If you need better than what comes with, the various magazines like PC Magazine, PC World, etc. frequently have comparisons of OCR software - just go to their web sites and check it out. Some of the better OCR is available from http://www.scansoft.com .

.bh.

 

[elkinm]

Thanks, will try the software and see how they are.

I thought scanner software should be able to do this. I have and Epson scanner and don't know how to do it, but I will keep looking.

Thanks again.

 

[timswim78]

Originally posted by: elkinm
Thanks, will try the software and see how they are.

I thought scanner software should be able to do this. I have and Epson scanner and don't know how to do it, but I will keep looking.

Thanks again.

What model do you have and what sotware came with it?

 

[FrustratedUser]

Originally posted by: duragezic
I believe the software you are looking for is called Optical Character Recognition. I've used one in the past to convert a document I typed on some other computer into a Word file by scanning it. It worked very well. I searched around but I can't remember the name of the program I used. Just search for OCR programs. Most of them cost, but they usually have demos, but how limited the demos are I do not know. Maybe someone will have a recommendation for a good one?

It looks like SimpleOCR is free. Otherwise there is a bunch of this page.

Looks interesting

 

[Zepper]

My Epson (Perfection 1260 PHOTO) has OCR as an option in the SmartPanel. And I looked at the specs on a newer model in the 2400 series and it had ABBYY or something like that for OCR.
.bh.

 

[Rottie]

I heard OmniPage is a better OCR but I use Textbridge OCR by SoftScan

 

[GreatBarracuda]

Office 2003 has this feature built-in called Microsoft Office Document Scanning.