LEGAL NOTICES Copyright © 2001 by ScanSoft, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted, transcribed, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or translated into any language or computer language in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, magnetic, optical, chemical, manual, or otherwise, without prior written consent from the Legal Department at ScanSoft, Inc., 9 Centennial Drive, Peabody, Massachusetts 01960. Printed in the United States of America and in the United Kingdom. The software described in this book is furnished under license and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of such license. IMPOR TANT NOTICE ScanSoft, Inc. provides this publication "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Some states or jurisdictions do not allow disclaimer of express or implied warranties in certain transactions; therefore, this statement may not apply to you. ScanSoft reserves the right to revise this publication and to make changes from time to time in the content hereof without obligation of ScanSoft to notify any person of such revision or changes. TRA D E M A R K S A N D C R E D I T S ScanSoft, OmniPage, OmniPage Pro, PaperPort, Pagis, True Page, DirectOCR, AutoOCR, OCR Proofreader are registered trademarks or trademarks of ScanSoft, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks and tradenames are hereby recognized and may be registered to their respective holders. ScanSoft, Inc. 9 Centennial Drive Peabody, MA USA 01960 Part Number 50-28001-00A C ONTENTS WELCOME Using this manual Getting online help Online HTML Help Context-Sensitive Help Tech Notes Glossary VII viii ix ix ix x x 1 INSTALLATION AND SETUP System requirements Installing OmniPage Pro Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro How to start the program Registering your software New features in OmniPage Pro 11 11 12 13 14 16 17 18 2 INTRODUCTION What is optical character recognition OmniPage Pro's OCR capabilities Documents in OmniPage Pro Basic processing steps The OmniPage Pro desktop The Standard toolbar The Menu bar The Image toolbar 19 20 20 21 21 22 23 23 24 MAN U A L OM N I PA G E P R O iii The Formatting toolbar The OmniPage Toolbox Managing documents Thumbnail view Detail view Customizing columns in Detail view Deleting pages from a document Printing a document Closing a document OmniPage Documents Why save to OPD How to save to ODP Settings 24 25 26 26 27 28 28 28 29 29 30 30 31 3 TUTORIAL: PROCESSING DOCUMENTS Quick Start Guide Loading and recognizing sample image files Scanning and recognizing a single page Processing documents using the OCR Wizard Processing documents automatically Command buttons Processing documents manually Processing a document automatically and finishing it manually Processing from other applications How to set up Direct OCR How to use Direct OCR How to use OmniPage Pro 11 with your PaperPort software Processing documents with Schedule OCR Defining the source of page images 33 34 34 34 37 40 41 42 44 45 45 45 46 47 48 iv CONT E N T S Input from image files Input from scanner Scanning with an ADF Scanning long documents without an ADF Describing the layout of the document Manual zoning Working with zones Zone properties Table grids in the image Using zone templates 48 49 50 51 51 53 53 54 56 57 4 PROOFING AND EDITING Proofreading ocr results Checking recognized text against original User dictionaries IntelliTrain The editor display and views Text and image editing Reading text aloud Page outline 59 60 61 62 63 66 67 68 70 5 SAVING AND EXPORTING Preparing recognition results for export Saving to file Saving original images Saving recognition results Saving a document as you work Copying a document to the Clipboard Sending a document as a mail attachment 71 72 73 73 74 75 76 77 MAN U A L OM N I PA G E P R O v 6 TE C H N I C A L I N F O R M A T I O N Troubleshooting Solutions to try first Testing OmniPage Pro Low memory problems Low disk space problems Supported file types File types for opening and saving images File types for saving recognition results Saving to PDF OCR problems Text does not get recognized properly Problems with fax recognition Uninstalling the software 79 80 80 81 82 82 83 83 84 85 86 86 87 88 System or performance problems during OCR 87 vi CONT E N T S Welcome Welcome to OmniPage Pro 11, and thank you for using our software! The following documentation has been provided to help you get started and give you an overview of the program. This User's Manual This manual introduces you to using OmniPage Pro 11. It includes installation and setup instructions, a description of the program's commands and working areas, task-oriented instructions, ways to customize and control processing, and technical information. Online Help OmniPage Pro's online Help contains information on features, settings, and procedures. The online Help is provided as HTML help, and has been designed for quick and easy information retrieval. Comprehensive context-sensitive help aims to provide just enough assistance to let you keep working without delay. Please see the section Getting online Help. Readme File The Readme file contains last-minute information about the software. Please read it before using OmniPage Pro. To open this HTML file, choose Readme in the OmniPage Pro Installer or afterwards in the Help menu. Scanning and other information ScanSoft's web site at www.scansoft.com provides timely information on the program. The Scanner Guide contains up-dated information about supported scanners and related issues. Access ScanSoft's web site from the OmniPage Pro Installer or afterwards from the Help menu. MAN U A L OM N I PA G E P R O vii USING THIS MANUAL This manual is written with the assumption that you know how to work in the Microsoft Windows environment. Please refer to your Windows documentation if you have questions about how to use dialog boxes, menu commands, scroll bars, drag and drop functionality, shortcut menus, and so on. We also assume you are familiar with your scanner and its supporting software, and that the scanner is installed and working correctly before it is setup with OmniPage Pro 11. Please refer to the scanner's own documentation as necessary. The following conventions are used in this manual: Bold Italic Introduces new terms and presents sub-headings. Names sections in this manual (unless otherwise stated, the section is located in the same chapter as the reference). Names the main buttons used in automatic processing: Start, Stop, Finish, Additional. Presents file names: sample.tif Non-serif Note Tip Presents an item of additional information. Presents ideas for using program features to accomplish specific tasks. viii WE L C O M E GETTING ONLINE HELP In addition to using this manual, you can use OmniPage Pro's online Help to learn about features, settings, and procedures. Online Help is available after you install OmniPage Pro. Online HTML Help Open OmniPage Pro's online Help at its top level by choosing OmniPage Pro Help Topics at the top of the Help menu. This allows you to see topics arranged in a Table of Contents, search an alphabetical list of keywords or make full-text searches through the topics. Other items in the Help menu provide access to useful topics or web pages. Press F1 as you are working with the program to see an online help topic relating to the current screen area, dialog box or warning message. Context-Sensitive Help You can get concise on-the-spot information in a popup window about a particular OmniPage Pro menu item, toolbar button, screen area or dialog box, in the following ways: Click the Help button in the Standard toolbar to get the help icon. Click this on any item on the desktop outside a dialog box or warning message. Press Shift + F1 to get the same help icon. Click the question mark button in the upper right corner of a dialog box and then click an item in the dialog box to see the popup window. Some dialog boxes or warning messages have their own Help button, or a help text. Click the button or the text to get information on the dialog or message box. Click anywhere to remove a context-sensitive popup Help window. MAN U A L OM N I PA G E P R O ix Tech Notes ScanSoft's web site at www.scansoft.com contains Tech Notes on commonly reported issues using OmniPage Pro 11. Web pages may also offer assistance on the installation process and troubleshooting. Glossary This manual does not include a glossary. The online Help has a comprehensive glossary, with its own alphabetical index and a table of contents. Please consult it if you want to find the meaning of a term used in this Manual or in the program. x WE L C O M E 1 Installation and setup This chapter provides information on installing and starting OmniPage Pro 11. It presents the following topics: x x x x x x System requirements Installing OmniPage Pro Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro How to start the program Registering your software New features in OmniPage Pro 11 MAN U A L OM N I PA G E P R O 11 SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS You need the following minimum system requirements to install and run OmniPage Pro 11: x x x x x A computer with a Pentium or higher processor Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, or Windows NT 4.0 32MB of memory (RAM), 64MB recommended 75MB of free hard disk space for the application files plus 10MB working space during installation 9MB for Microsoft Installer (MSI) if not present and 44MB for Internet Explorer if not present. (These are present as part of the operating system in Windows 98, Windows ME and Windows 2000.) SVGA monitor with 256 colors and 800 x 600 pixel resolution Windows-compatible pointing device CD-ROM drive for installation A compatible scanner if you plan to scan documents. Please see the Scanner Guide at ScanSoft's web site (www.scansoft.com) for a list of supported scanners. x x x x Note Performance and speed will be enhanced if your computer's processor, memory, and available disk space exceed minimum requirements. 12 INSTALLATION AND SETUP INSTALLING OMNIPAGE PRO OmniPage Pro 11's installation program takes you through installation with instructions on every screen. Before installing OmniPage Pro: x Make sure your scanner is connected, turned on, and compatible with your system. x Close all other applications, especially anti-virus programs. x Log into your computer with administrator privileges if you are installing on Windows 2000 or Windows NT. x If you own a previous version of OmniPage Pro, or if you are upgrading from OmniPage Limited Edition, the installer will ask for your consent to uninstall that product first. w To install OmniPage Pro: 1. Insert OmniPage Pro's CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive. The installation program should start automatically. If it does not start, locate your CD-ROM drive in Windows Explorer and double-click the Setup.exe program at the top-level of the CD-ROM. 2. Choose a language to use during installation. This language will be used for the Text-to-Speech system and as the program's interface language. The program interface language is used for displays such as menu items, dialog boxes, warning messages and so on. You can change the interface language later from within OmniPage Pro 11, but your choice at installation time determines which Text-to-Speech system will be installed with the program. See the second note below. 3. Follow the instructions on each screen to install the software. All files needed for scanning are copied automatically during installation. Note Sometimes uninstalling and then reinstalling OmniPage Pro will solve a problem. See Uninstalling the Software at the end of chapter 6. INSTALLING OMNIPAGE PRO 13 Note It is planned to provide Text-to-Speech for English (British and US), French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. This may vary depending on region or version. Please check in the Readme file for latest information. A speech system for only one language can be installed with OmniPage Pro. See also the section Reading text aloud in chapter 5. SETTING UP YOUR SCANNER WITH OMNIPAGE PRO All files needed for scanner setup and support are copied automatically during the program's installation. Before using OmniPage Pro 11 for scanning, your scanner should be correctly installed and tested for correct functionality. Scanner installation and setup are done through the Scanner Wizard. You can start this yourself, as described below. Otherwise, the Scanner Wizard appears when you first attempt to perform scanning from OmniPage Pro 11. Please follow these steps to use the Scanner Wizard to setup your scanner with OmniPage Pro 11: x x x x x x x Choose StartProgramsScanSoft OmniPage Pro 11.0 Scanner Wizard or click the Setup button in the Scanner panel of ...