Optical character reader software?>.

[tony sayer]

Can anyone recommend an OCR package that works with olde WIN 2000 thats either not too expensive or possibly free;?..

Cheers....

[Andrew Holme]

I've used FreeOCR :

[Ian Jackson]

In message , tony sayer writes

I don't know about 'recommend', but a quick Google on 'ocr freeware' comes up with quite a few possibles (in case no one comes up with a good suggestion).

The subject of OCR freeware used to be discussed from time to time in the alt.comp.freeware NG. I got the impression that nobody found anything as good as the payware programs. However, a look at the alt.comp.freeware archives might be useful. I haven't bothered to try any of the OCR freeware myself, as I once lashed out on ABBYY OCR (cost £60!!!).

[Tony]

Google Docs is supposed to do OCR now - just upload an image or a pdf and it'll convert it for you. I've not tried it so can't vouch for it's accuracy but it's free and easy to try.

Tony

[John Rumm]

Abbey FineReader Pro is very good (but not free)

[Harry Bloomfield]

I agree - a copy of it was included with a combination fax/printer/scanner I bought a while ago.

[dennis]

maybe?

[Robert Baer]

I use ABBY Fine Reader which came free with the Mustek 1200 UB Plus flatbed scanner; runs in Win98Se and Win2K.

[Robert Baer]

I use ABBY and find it to be rather decent; did you have a problem with it?

[Ian Jackson]

In message , Robert Baer writes

Not really. It's pretty good - once you get the hang of it. To be honest, I haven't really used it all that much, and I'm sure I have not explored its full potential.

I started with V4, which was a freebie with a computer magazine. It worked OK, but couldn't accept a PDF as an input file. V6 and later can.

I think I first had V6 as a free trial download which, much to the consternation of one of my works colleagues, would accept a protected PDF, and effectively allow you to save it to an unprotected file. When the free trial expired, I downloaded the V6 pay-for version (which I still have), but found that they had removed the 'unprotect-a-PDF' function (not that it affected me).

For a scanned document, it says it requires at least 300dpi. However, after a bit of titivating, I've successfully OCRed an existing image of an old WW2 document, where it was only 150dpi.

ABBYY still keep sending me suggestions that I should upgrade to the latest version, but it's not free. It's at a 'special discount price' of around £50, so I'll be sticking with V6.

[tony sayer]

In article , Andrew Holme scribeth thus

Yep tried that, doesn't run with WIN 2000 Simple OCR does tried that Job done!.,.

Thanks to all who replied. By mail as well as via news, seems that the Abbvy one is very good for more demanding applications FWIW..

[Peter Johnson]

Recent versions of Windows or Office (not sure which) have OCR built in. It's very basic and doesn't retain formatting but might be ok for light use.

[Roger Mills]

Mine was! I use the version that came on the cover disc of PCPlus magazine - but that was a few years ago (2002, I think) so you'll probably not find that!

[km]

Have you had another look at your scanner installation CD?

In the past it was quite common to include a "lite" version of OCR software. If you have the CD from a previous scanner it may be worth checking, although there is the possibility that the software is tied-in to the scanner model it was supplied with.

km

[tony sayer]

In article , km scribeth thus

Thanks but that one, an early Canon, didn't have that but I've now been using Simple OCR which has done the job fine:)...

[John Rumm]

You may find that other cannon CDs (available for download from the drivers section of their support site) may include OCR software...