Do scanners come with OCR software, or how do I get a decent program?

[CC]

I'm in the market for an all-in-one gizmo for my home. But the scanner part has to have OCR software for it to be of greatest use to me. Do most of these (I'm looking at an HP model) come with OCR software? If not, what are some good ways to turn scanned book or magazine text into a Word document? Thanks.
xo, C.

[xiix]

I have had amazing results with Adobe Acrobat's built-in OCR. The only limitation being it does not technically create Word documents (though I imagine once the text is OCR'd you could quite easily copy & paste into word, though perhaps .pdf documents would suit your needs instead?

I have tried a number of high-end OCR packages and none of them seem to be as easy to use or reliable as Adobe Acrobat.

[scr4]

Originally Posted by xiix

I have had amazing results with Adobe Acrobat's built-in OCR.

But you have to buy the full Acrobat Standard package, right?

[CC]

I just poked around in Adobe 8 and found that I can get a document viewed with OCR and turned into a pdf by submitting it online. I'm really looking for something I can do here at home.

That is, Adobe 8 - the free version.

[ZipperJJ]

I have also heard that the latest version of Acrobat Professional has awesome OCR. I have Acrobat Pro but I have not used it myself. But someone else I know who uses it thinks it's great.

You'd want to just buy any scanner you like, and then buy a copy of Acrobat Professional.

A little tip: if you're involved in any way with any sort of higher learning institution, or maybe even a local school district, you can probably get Acrobat Pro for cheap. Ask around.

[Key Lime Guy]

I've had two HP scanners (not all-in-one, just flatbeds) and they both came with decent OCR components to the software.

[Keeve]

I bought a Canon "CanoScan N650U" for about US$120 about 5 years ago. I'm quite satisfied with the OCR software that came with it.

My suggestion: Read the box. If it comes with anything free, they'll be sure to publicize it.

[Dewey Finn]

The all-in-one device I have now came with ScanSoft PaperPort SE. It can scan to PDF, JPEG, TIFF or BMP file and also does OCR. I've seen the same software on scanners we purchased at work.

[t-bonham@scc.net]

Most scanners or all-in-one units now come with some OCR software included. Often a scaled-down, limited version of a commercial package. The recognition quality of these free packages is mostly mediocre, but quite often that is 'good enough' for infrequent, personal use.

I'm involved with Project Gutenberg, and the Distributed Proofreaders project. They have scanned & OCR'd somewhere around 4-5 million pages of text so far (over 11,000 books posted to Project Gutenberg). This requires higher OCR accuracy and features than the typical home OCR user. The experts there seem to agree that none of the free OCR packages are good enough, and they mostly have settled on the Abbyy Finereader package (though not requiring the latest version -- any of the last 2 or 3 versions seem workable). The Forums on their site ("Providing Content") have quite a bit of discussion on OCR software.

[Epimetheus]

There are cheap alternatives that allow one to convert pdfs to word files. PrimoPDF has some low cost (though not free) add ons that allow you to do that. I think there are several free ones out there somewhere that I have used in the past, but cannot find them at this moment. (Hey, it is friday and I've been "celebrating" the weekend)

[Myglaren]

I bought a cheap Acer scanner a few years ago that came with a free version of Abbyy Finereader and an alternative OCR.

I have only used it a couple of times and not at all for the past two years so couldn't really say if the quality is acceptable but it worked OK for me when I needed it.

[LSLGuy]

Plain old Office 2003 & 2007 also include decent OCR. I don't think it comes with the student version, but it definitely comes with the "pro" version.

For 2003, look on the Start menu under "Microsoft Office" then "Microsoft Office Tools", then "Microsoft Office Document Scanning". The 2007 menus will be similar.

Once configured, ODS generates very nice Word docs directly from the scanner.

The hardest part of buying an HP printer/scanner is stopping it from taking over your computer.