LEGAL NOTICES Copyright © 2002 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 ScanSoft, Inc., 9 Centennial Drive, Peabody, Massachusetts 01960. Printed in the United States of America and in the Netherlands. 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. IMPORTANT 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. TR A D E M A R K S AND CREDITS ScanSoft, OmniPage, OmniPage Pro, PaperPort, Pagis, True Page and Direct OCR are registered trademarks or trademarks of ScanSoft, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries. All other company names or product names referenced herein may be the trademarks of their respective holders. ScanSoft, Inc. 9 Centennial Drive Peabody, MA 01960 U.S.A. ScanSoft Belgium BVBA Guldensporenpark 32 BE-9820 Merelbeke Belgium Part Number 50-281201-00A C ONTENTS WELCOME Using this Guide Getting online Help Online HTML Help Context-Sensitive Help Tech Notes Glossary 7 8 9 9 9 10 10 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 12 11 12 13 14 16 17 17 2 INTRODUCTION What is optical character recognition OmniPage Pro's OCR capabilities Documents in OmniPage Pro Basic processing steps The OmniPage Desktop The Menu bar The Toolbars The Image Panel 19 20 20 21 21 22 23 23 24 OmniPage Pro User's Guide iii The Text Editor The OmniPage Toolbox Managing documents Thumbnails Document Manager Customizing Document Manager columns Deleting pages from a document Printing a document Closing a document OmniPage Documents Why save to OPD How to save to OPD Settings 24 25 26 26 27 28 28 29 29 29 30 30 31 3 PROCESSING DOCUMENTS Quick Start Guide Loading and recognizing sample image files Scanning and recognizing a single page Processing overview Automatic processing Stopping and restarting automatic processing Manual processing Combined processing Processing with the OCR Wizard Processing from other applications How to set up Direct OCR How to use Direct OCR How to use OmniPage Pro with PaperPort Processing with Schedule OCR Defining the source of page images Input from image files 33 34 34 34 36 38 39 40 41 43 45 45 45 46 47 48 48 iv Contents Input from scanner Scanning with an ADF Scanning without an ADF Describing the layout of the document Zones and backgrounds Automatic zoning Manual zoning Zone types and properties Working with zones Table grids in the image Using zone templates 49 50 51 51 53 53 54 55 57 59 61 4 PROOFING AND EDITING The editor display and views Proofreading OCR results Verifying text User dictionaries Training Manual training IntelliTrain Training files Text and image editing On-the-fly editing Reading text aloud 63 64 65 66 68 69 69 70 71 72 74 75 OmniPage Pro User's Guide v 5 SAVING AND EXPORTING Saving original images Saving recognition results Saving a document as you work Selecting a formatting level Selecting advanced saving options Saving to PDF Copying pages to Clipboard Sending pages by mail 77 78 79 80 81 82 84 84 85 6 TECHNICAL INFORMATION Troubleshooting Solutions to try first Testing OmniPage Pro Increasing memory resources Increasing disk space Text does not get recognized properly Problems with fax recognition ODMA support Advanced features in Schedule OCR Supported file types File types for opening and saving images File types for saving recognition results Uninstalling the software 87 88 88 89 90 90 91 92 93 93 94 94 95 96 System or performance problems during OCR 92 INDEX 97 vi Contents Welcome Welcome to OmniPage Pro®, 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 Guide This guide introduces you to using OmniPage Pro 12. 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. The guide is presented in PDF format, allowing you to use hyperlink jumps on cross-references and other navigation tools in your PDF viewer. 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. See "Getting online Help" on page 9. 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; ScanSoft tests the 25 most widely used scanner models. Access ScanSoft's web site from the OmniPage Pro Installer or afterwards from the Help menu. OmniPage Pro User's Guide 7 Using this Guide This guide 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 12. Please refer to the scanner's own documentation as necessary. The following conventions are used in this guide: Bold Italic Non-serif Introduces new terms and presents sub-headings. Names topics in the online Help system. Presents longer option texts in dialog boxes. Presents file names: sample.tif A note presents an item of additional information. A tip presents ideas for using program features to accomplish specific tasks. 8 Welcome Getting online Help In addition to using this guide, 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 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 tool 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. Use Shift + F1 to get contextsensitive help for shortcut menu items. 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. OmniPage Pro User's Guide 9 Tech Notes ScanSoft's web site at www.scansoft.com contains Tech Notes on commonly reported issues using OmniPage Pro 12. Web pages may also offer assistance on the installation process and troubleshooting. Glossary This guide 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 guide or in the program. 10 Welcome Chapter 1 Installation and setup This chapter provides information on installing and starting OmniPage Pro 12. It presents the following topics: X System requirements X Installing OmniPage Pro X Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro X How to start the program X Registering your software X New features in OmniPage Pro 12 OmniPage Pro User's Guide 11 System requirements You need the following minimum system requirements to install and run OmniPage Pro 12: X A computer with a Pentium or higher processor X Microsoft Windows 98 (from second edition), Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0 (with at least Service Pack 6), Windows 2000 or Windows XP X 64MB of memory (RAM), 128MB recommended X 90MB of free hard disk space for the application files plus 5MB working space during installation X 5MB for Microsoft Installer (MSI) if not present (This is present as part of the operating system in Windows Me, Windows 2000 and Windows XP) X SVGA monitor with 256 colors, but preferably 16-bit color (called High Color in Windows 2000 and Medium Color in XP) and 800 x 600 pixel resolution X Windows-compatible pointing device X CD-ROM drive for installation X A compatible scanner with its own scanner driver software, 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. Performance and speed will be enhanced if your computer's processor, memory, and available disk space exceed minimum requirements. 12 Installation and setup Chapter 1 Installing OmniPage Pro OmniPage Pro 12's installation program takes you through installation with instructions on every screen. Before installing OmniPage Pro: X Close all other applications, especially anti-virus programs. X Log into your computer with administrator privileges if you are installing on Windows NT, 2000 or XP. X If you own a previous version of OmniPage Pro, or if you are upgrading from demonstration software or an OmniPage Special Edition, the installer asks your consent to uninstall that product. 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 Autorun.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 12, 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. Sometimes uninstalling and then reinstalling OmniPage Pro will solve a problem. See "Uninstalling the software" on page 96. It is planned to provide Text-to-Speech for English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. This may vary depending on region or version. The Readme file provides latest information. A speech system for only one language can be installed with OmniPage Pro. See "Reading text aloud" on page 75. Installing OmniPage Pro 13 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 12 for scanning, your scanner should be installed with its own scanner driver software and tested for correct functionality. Scanner driver software is not included with OmniPage Pro. 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. Please follow these steps to use the Scanner Wizard to setup you ...