# Need Recommendations for Free OCR Software

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-recommendations-for-free-ocr-software/426766>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [November 16, 2007, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-recommendations-for-free-ocr-software/426766 "2007-11-16T21:52:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Siege](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Siege](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siege)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2007, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-recommendations-for-free-ocr-software/426766/1 "2007-11-16T21:52:22Z")

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Yes, I’m asking on behalf of my employer again. Does anyone know of any good, free Optical Character Recognition Software? If not free, how about cheap?

Thanks as always, for your help.

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**Author:** ![whatami](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/85f322/32.png) [@whatami](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whatami)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2007, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-recommendations-for-free-ocr-software/426766/2 "2007-11-16T23:41:50Z")

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[QUOTE=Siege]  
Yes, I’m asking on behalf of my employer again. Does anyone know of any good, free Optical Character Recognition Software? If not free, how about cheap?

Thanks as always, for your help.  
[/QUOTE]

I’ve found the software from ABBYY PDF converter to be very good. You can get the most basic version for something like $70, up to a lot for their deluxe business version… [www.abbyy.com](http://www.abbyy.com)

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**Author:** ![Dragwyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dragwyr/32/2855_2.png) [@Dragwyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dragwyr)\
**Post date:** [November 17, 2007, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-recommendations-for-free-ocr-software/426766/3 "2007-11-17T04:16:08Z")

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Have you tried [Microsoft Office Document Imaging](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_Document_Imaging)? I’ve used it a couple times and it seemed to work ok for my limited needs.

Also [here is a list of some other titles](http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Search/ocr.html) you may want to look at. Some are free and some are shareware.