User manual NUANCE SCANSOFT OMNIPAGE PRO 14

LE G A L N O T I C E S Copyright © 2003 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 Ireland. 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. IM P O R T A N T NO T I C E 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 CR E D I T S ScanSoft, OmniPage, OmniPage Pro, PaperPort, Pagis, True Page, Direct OCR, RealSpeak and ASR-1600 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. T H I R D PAR T Y L I C E N S E S / NOTICES Please see acknowledgements/notices at the end of this guide. ScanSoft, Inc. 9 Centennial Drive Peabody, MA 01960 U.S.A. ScanSoft Belgium BVBA Guldensporenpark 32 BE-9820 Merelbeke Belgium Part Number 50-281A-10119 C ONTENTS WE L C O M E Using this Guide Getting online Help Online HTML Help Context-Sensitive Help Tech Notes Glossary When to go online 7 8 9 9 9 10 10 10 1 IN S T A L L A T I O N AND SETUP 11 12 13 14 16 17 17 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 14 2 IN T R O D U C T I O N 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 The Text Editor The OmniPage Toolbox 19 20 20 21 21 22 23 23 24 24 25 OmniPage Pro User's Guide iii 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 How to load an OPD Settings 26 26 27 28 28 29 29 29 30 30 31 31 3 PR O C E S S I N G DOCUMENTS 33 34 34 34 36 38 39 40 41 43 44 44 45 46 47 48 48 49 50 51 51 53 53 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 workflows Processing from other applications How to set up Direct OCR How to use Direct OCR How to use OmniPage Pro with PaperPort Processing with the Batch Manager Defining the source of page images Input from image files Input from scanner Scanning with an ADF Scanning without an ADF Describing the layout of the document Zones and backgrounds Automatic zoning iv Contents Manual zoning Zone types and properties Working with zones Speed zoning Table grids in the image Using zone templates 54 55 57 59 59 61 4 PR O O F I N G AND EDITING 63 64 65 67 68 69 69 70 70 71 73 75 76 The editor display and views Proofreading OCR results Verifying text User dictionaries Languages Training Manual training IntelliTrain Training files Text and image editing On-the-fly editing Reading text aloud 5 SA V I N G AND EXPORTING Saving OmniPage Documents Export Results button Saving original images Saving recognition results Selecting a formatting level Selecting converter options Using multiple converters Saving to PDF Converting from PDF Copying pages to Clipboard Sending pages by mail Other export targets 79 80 80 81 82 83 85 86 88 89 89 90 92 OmniPage Pro User's Guide v 6 WO R K F L O W S Workflows Sample workflows Running workflows Workflow Assistant Creating workflows Modifying workflows Batch Manager Creating new jobs Modifying jobs Managing and running jobs Watched folders Barcode driven workflows Voice recognition 93 94 94 96 98 98 101 101 102 103 103 104 106 107 7 TE C H N I C A L INFORMATION 109 Troubleshooting 110 Solutions to try first 110 Testing OmniPage Pro 111 Increasing memory resources 112 Increasing disk space 112 Text does not get recognized properly 113 Problems with fax recognition 114 System or performance problems during OCR 114 Supported file types 115 File types for opening and saving images 115 File types for saving recognition results 116 Uninstalling the software 118 vi Contents Welcome Welcome to this OmniPage Pro® text recognition program, and thank you for choosing 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 14. 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 OmniPage Pro User's Guide 7 used scanner models. Access ScanSoft's web site from the OmniPage Pro Installer or afterwards from the Help menu. 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 14. 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. OmniPage Pro 14 Office is a version of the product designed for more intensive use and is tailored to office environments. Its added features are denoted through the guide by this symbol. For a concise listing, see "New features in OmniPage Pro 14" on page 17. 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 14. 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. When to go online This guide concentrates on providing background understanding of program features, suggesting also what they can be useful for. The online Help provides mainly numbered procedures. Turn to online Help for the following items or for grater detail on the following topics: Keyboard guide Settings guidelines Manual training Export Converter options Using the Text Editor On-the-fly zoning and editing 10 Welcome Chapter 1 Installation and setup This chapter provides information on installing and starting OmniPage Pro 14. It presents the following topics: 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 14 OmniPage Pro User's Guide 11 System requirements The minimum requirements to install and run OmniPage Pro 14 are: A computer with an Intel® Pentium® III processor or equivalent Microsoft® Windows® 98 (from second edition), Windows Me, Windows NT® 4.0 (from Service Pack 6), Windows 2000 (from Service Pack 2), Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 with at least Service Pack 2 128MB of memory (RAM), 256MB recommended 135MB of free hard disk space for application and sample files plus 40-45MB working space during installation. Additionally: 20-67 MB per RealSpeakTM module (343 MB for 9 languages) 2 MB per ASR speech recognition language (15MB for 7 languages) * 18 MB for ScanSoft PDF Converter * 3.4 MB for ScanSoft PDF Printer Driver * 5MB for Microsoft Installer (MSI) if not present (it is included in most Windows operating systems) Up to 5MB for system updates An SVGA monitor with 256 colors, but preferably 16-bit color (called High Color in Windows 2000 and Medium Color in XP) and a resolution of at least 800 x 600 pixels A CD-ROM drive for installation A Windows compatible pointing device A compatible scanner with its own scanner driver software, if you plan to scan documents. See the Scanner Guide at ScanSoft's web site (www.scansoft.com) for a list of supported scanners Web access is needed for product registration, Scanner Wizard database updating and obtaining live updates for the program. * Supplied with OmniPage Pro 14 Office only. 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 14's installation program takes you through installation with instructions on every screen. Before installing OmniPage Pro: Close all other applications, especially anti-virus programs. Log into your computer with administrator privileges if you are installing on Windows NT, 2000, XP or Server 2003. 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. ! 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. Accept the End-User License Agreement and enter the serial number shown on the CD envelope. 3. Choose a complete or a custom installation. A complete installation installs all RealSpeakTM Text-to-Speech language modules (currently 9). In OmniPage Pro 14 Office, up to 7 ASR-1600TM Speech Recognition modules are installed. Custom installation lets you exclude or add modules. To exclude a module, click its down arrow and select `This feature will be installed when required'. 4. 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 118. You can use the Control Panel's Add/Remove Programs facility to add or remove RealSpeak or ASR modules later. You will need your installation CD for this. 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, but no scanner setup occurs at installation time. Before using OmniPage Pro 14 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 setup is done through the Scanner Setup Wizard. You can start this yourself, as described below. Otherwise, it appears when you first attempt to perform scanning. Proceed as follows: Choose Start!All Programs!ScanSoft OmniPage Pro 14.0! Scanner Wizard or click the Setup button in the Scanner panel of the Options dialog box. or choose Scan in the Get Page drop-down list in the OmniPage Toolbox and click the Get Page button. The Scanner Setup Wizard starts. If you have a web connection, the first panel invites you to update the scanner database supplied with the wizard. Choose Yes or No and click on Next. Choose `Select and test scanner or digital camera', then click Next. If you have a single installed scanner, it appears, along with any scanners previously set up with OmniPage Pro. If the required scanner is not listed, click Add Scanner... . You see a list of all detected scanner drivers in the checkmarked categories. This can include network devices. Select one and click OK. To install a second device, you must run the Scanner Wizard again. The wizard reports whether the chosen scanner model already has settings in the scanner database. If it does, you do not need to test it. If it does not, you should test it. Click on Next. If you chose not to test, click Finish. If you chose testing, click Next to have the scanner connection tested. If the connection is in order, you see a menu of further tests. Choose which testing steps you want to run. The Basic test scan is recommended. 14 Installation and setup Chapter 1 By default OmniPage Pro uses its own scanning interface, located in the Scanner panel of the Options dialog box. If you want to use your scanner's own interface instead, choose Advanced settings and select this. Choose Modify hints only if you are experienced in configuring scanners or have been advised by Technical Support to do so. Click Next to start the tests. For the Basic scan test, insert a test page into your scanner. The wizard will scan using your scanner manufacturer's software. Click on Next. Your scanner's native user-interface will appear. Click on Scan to begin the sample scan. If necessary, click on Missing Image... or Improper Orientation... and make the appropriate selections. Once the image appears correctly in the window, click on Next. Move through the remaining requested tests, following the instructions on the screen. When all the requested tests have been completed successfully, the Scanner Wizard reports and invites you to click on Finish. You have successfully configured your scanner to work with OmniPage Pro 14! To change the scanner settings at a later time, or to setup or remove a scanner, reopen the Scanner Setup Wizard from the Windows Start menu or from the Scanner panel of the Options dialog box. To test and repair an improperly functioning scanner, open the wizard and select `Test the current scanner or digital camera' in the second panel, then work through the procedure described above, maybe using advice received from Technical Support. To specify a different default scanner, open the wizard to reach the list of setup scanners. Move the highlight to the desired scanner and be sure to close the wizard with Finish. To get updated settings for your current scanner, open the wizard, request a fresh database download in the first screen, then choose `Use current settings with current device', click Next and then Finish. Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro 15 How to start the program To start OmniPage Pro 14 do one of the following: Click Start in the Windows taskbar and choose All Programs! ScanSoft OmniPage Pro 14.0!OmniPage Pro 14.0. Double-click the OmniPage Pro icon in the program's installation folder or on the Windows desktop if placed there. Double-click an OmniPage Document (OPD) icon or file name; the clicked document is loaded into the program. See "OmniPage Documents" on page 29. Right click one or more image file icons or file names for a shortcut menu. Select Open With... OmniPage Pro application. The images are loaded into the program. On opening, OmniPage Pro's title screen is displayed and then its desktop. See "The OmniPage Desktop" on page 22. It provides an introduction to the program's main working areas. There are several ways of running the program with a limited interface: Use the Batch Manager program. Click Start in the Windows taskbar and choose All Programs!ScanSoft OmniPage Pro 14.0! OmniPage Batch Manager. See page 47. Click Acquire Text from the File menu of an application registered with the Direct OCRTM facility. See "How to set up Direct OCR" on page 44. Right-click on one or more image file icons or file names for a shortcut menu. Select OmniPage Pro 14 and choose a target format or a workflow from its sub-menu. The files will be processed according to the workflow instructions. See page 96. Click the OmniPage icon on the taskbar. Choose a workflow to start the program and run the workflow. In OmniPage Pro 14 Office, voice selection of workflow is possible. Use OmniPage Pro 14 with ScanSoft's PaperPort® or Pagis® document management products, to add OCR services. See "How to use OmniPage Pro with PaperPort" on page 46. 16 Installation and setup Chapter 1 Registering your software ScanSoft's online registration runs at the end of installation. Please ensure web access is available. We provide an easy electronic form that can be completed in less than five minutes. When the form is filled, click Submit. If you did not register the software during installation, you will be periodically invited to register later. You can go to www.scansoft.com to register online. Click on Support and from the main support screen choose Register in the left-hand column. For a statement on the use of your registration data, please see ScanSoft's Privacy Policy. New features in OmniPage Pro 14 The OmniPage® product family is augmented by OmniPage Pro 14. If you are upgrading, you may not need to consult this guide very much. Here are some main areas of innovation compared to OmniPage Pro 12. Features unique to OmniPage Pro 14 Office have the Office icon: Feature Higher accuracy Improved layout retention Workflows and instant access Drag-and-drop recognition Adjustable recognition speed Speed zoning Financial dictionary Character validation Bullets and numbering More portable OPDs Description A new recognition and parsing engine, four years in development, delivers even better OCR accuracy. This engine also delivers superior page layout retention with True Page and Flowing Page formatting levels. Text flows better round irregular pictures. Save workflows to perform recurring tasks without having to take care of individual settings each time. Run workflows instantly from your taskbar. Select a zone and drag it into the working area of a target application. Graphics are pasted as image, text is recognized and pasted. Recognition performance can be optimized for greater speed or greater accuracy. On good quality documents even faster processing gives good results. Do manual zoning quickly. See auto-detected zones and double-click on any of them to turn them into real zones. An English financial dictionary is added to the existing legal and medical professional dictionaries, available for several languages. Validate individual accented letters for recognition, in addition to those enabled by the language choice. Bulleted and numbered paragraphs can be detected. Bullets and numbering can be inserted, removed and edited in the Text Editor. Save to OmniPage Document (Extended) to have training files, user dictionaries or zone templates embedded in the OPD. See page 31 page 83 page 93 page 89 page 31 page 59 page 31 page 31 page 73 page 29 Registering your software 17 Feature Colored backgrounds Resolution control Improved proofing system Concurrent saving Audio book publishing Voice read-back Batch Manager Description Get better recognition of text printed on color or shaded backgrounds. There is also improved noise removal. Choose the resolution for saved page images and for images embedded in recognized pages. The two parts of words hyphenated at line ends are now joined. The image viewer and the verifier display both image parts. Create multiple converters to save to more than one file type in one step: for example save page images and recognized pages. Save recognized texts as WAV audio files. Transfer these to CD to have scanned documents read aloud anytime - even on the move. ScanSoft RealSpeak as the Text-to-Speech solution provides better quality voices in more languages for having text read aloud. Redesign of the previous Schedule OCR facility gives more control and better overview for unattended processing of pre-defined jobs. Jobs can take input from watched folders, with better handling of multiple folders. Background processing runs whenever image files are sent to these folders. Recurring jobs are supported. Start a workflow by placing a barcode cover page in a scanner on top of your document. Cover page image files can start image file workflows. Generate tagged, signed and encrypted Portable Document Files. Allow reading of tags when PDF files are opened to improve layout retention. ScanSoft enables PDF files to be converted to Word documents when working in Microsoft Word, without using OmniPage Pro. Support for Microsoft Word 2003 (Word ML). In OmniPage Pro 14 Office support is added for Microsoft Reader (.LIT) and maintained for the XML and eBook file types. Start workflows and control proofing corrections by voice commands in a number of languages, using the included ScanSoft ASR-1600 voice recognition modules. Take image files from Microsoft SharePoint, any ODMA-compliant Document Management System (DMS) or an FTP site and export files to these locations for storage or group use. Create searchable, editable PDF files from text files, such as Word documents. OmniPage Pro installs a PDF printer driver that becomes available in all your print-capable applications. See page 49 page 85 page 65 page 86 page 116 page 76 page 101 Office Smart Folders page 104 Barcode cover pages page 106 Greater PDF support page 88 Open PDF files in MS Word page 89 Export to Office 2003 page 116 Voice control page 107 SharePoint, DMS and FTP page 92 Print to PDF functionality page 88 A more complete list of features and differences appears in online Help. 18 Installation and setup Chapter 2 Introduction You probably use your computer for business correspondence, preparing reports, handling data and an ever-increasing number of other uses. The challenge is that, in spite of the digital revolution, certain sources of information still circulate in printed, paper form and cannot be used immediately in a computer. For example, if you want to incorporate information from a magazine article in a report you are preparing, you somehow have to get the text from the article into your computer. Painstakingly retyping the article is not an appealing solution. This chapter introduces you to the solution: optical character recognition (OCR). It describes how OmniPage Pro 14 uses OCR technology to transform text from scanned pages or image files into editable text for use in your favorite computer applications. We present the following topics: What is optical character recognition · Documents in OmniPage Pro · Basic processing steps The OmniPage Desktop Managing documents OmniPage Documents Settings OmniPage Pro User's Guide 19 What is optical character recognition Optical character recognition is the process of extracting text from an image. This image can result from scanning a paper document or opening an electronic image file. Images do not have editable text characters; they have many tiny dots (pixels) that together form character shapes. These present a picture of the text on a page. During OCR, OmniPage Pro analyzes the character shapes in an image and defines solutions to produce editable text. After OCR, you can save the resulting text to a variety of word-processing, desktop publishing or spreadsheet applications. OmniPage Pro's OCR capabilities In addition to text recognition, OmniPage Pro can retain the following elements of a document through the OCR process. Graphics Photos, logos, and drawings are examples of graphics. Text formatting Font types, sizes and styles (such as bold, italic and underlines) are examples of character formatting. Indents, tabs, margins and line spacing are examples of paragraph formatting. Page formatting Column structure, table formats, and placement of graphics and headings are examples of page formatting. The graphics, text and page formatting elements that OmniPage Pro retains are determined by the settings you select. Refer to the Settings Guidelines in the online Help for more information about selecting settings. OmniPage Pro only recognizes machine-generated characters such as offset or laserprinted or typewritten text. However, it can retain handwritten text, such as a signature, as a graphic. 20 Introduction