# Scan book to searchable file **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 29, 2019, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scan-book-to-searchable-file/834714 "2019-05-29T16:04:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scan-book-to-searchable-file/834714/1 "2019-05-29T16:04:18Z")
I have a 50 page family history book published by a family member in the 1950s. Looking for inexpensive solutions/solutions for digitizing it that Dopers have used. I have tried the OCR utility included with current Canon printer/scanners without much luck. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scan-book-to-searchable-file/834714/2 "2019-05-29T16:30:47Z")
What OS? ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scan-book-to-searchable-file/834714/3 "2019-05-29T17:18:08Z")
> [@KneadToKnow](#): > > What OS? I am fairly agnostic but no Linux at the moment. Win7, Win10, MacOS or IOS. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scan-book-to-searchable-file/834714/4 "2019-05-29T17:19:22Z")
What do you mean by “not much luck”? ---
**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scan-book-to-searchable-file/834714/5 "2019-05-29T17:50:50Z")
can you take the book apart to scan flat pages? For me, 50 pages is on the outer limit of doable with a medium quality OCR program. There will be lots of errors, but after OCR cleaning them up doesn’t take a lot of time. It gets frustrating, but 50 pages is doable. Of course your milage may vary. I have found that FineReader from ABBYY Production does a good job for medium quality work. As always, you get what you pay for. Prices range from 0 to 1000’s. I don’t recommend 0. Your time is worth more than that. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scan-book-to-searchable-file/834714/6 "2019-05-29T19:13:50Z")
50 pages? I’d look at one of the book scanning services, rather than buy hardware and fool with it. For example, these folks would charge you $21.95 to scan it + 0.09/page, for a grand total of $26.45. > **[Book Scanning: We Scan Books For Consumers | Non-Destructive Scanning...](https://boundbookscanning.com/#)** > > The web\\'s most affordable non-destructive book scanning service! Our Low Cost Book and Document scanning service allows us to offer the lowest pricing available online. ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scan-book-to-searchable-file/834714/7 "2019-05-29T19:16:24Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > What do you mean by “not much luck”? Poor OCR ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scan-book-to-searchable-file/834714/8 "2019-05-29T19:16:44Z")
> [@bump](#): > > 50 pages? I’d look at one of the book scanning services, rather than buy hardware and fool with it. > For example, these folks would charge you $21.95 to scan it + 0.09/page, for a grand total of $26.45. > > [Book Scanning: We Scan Books For Consumers | Non-Destructive Scanning Services, Scanning Book](https://boundbookscanning.com/#) I think that’s the right answer. I think a decent OCR software by itself would cost more than that. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scan-book-to-searchable-file/834714/9 "2019-05-29T20:14:50Z")
> [@jasg](#): > > Poor OCR I don’t know what experiences you have with OCR, but maybe you have unrealistic expectations about accuracy? The mentioned Abbyy is very good, but all OCR is GIGO. Unless you have a [book scanner](https://www.thebestscanners.com/book-scanners) or are willing to disassemble the book, there is going to be a problem with the gutter edges of the pages. (I used to have a Plustek OpticBook, but it died years ago.) But there is another path that you might not have considered–there are [lots of OCR apps for Android](https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/best-android-ocr-apps-extracting-text-images/) (and I assume iPhones) that use the phone’s camera to capture the page and then OCR it. Try a few of those (and there are lots more than those listed) but know that nothing will not require lots of hand-editing. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scan-book-to-searchable-file/834714/10 "2019-05-29T20:25:17Z")
Been there, done that, for almost exactly the same purpose (a book of family history). I just used the OCR software I had and fixed the errors manually… but that sometimes meant completely re-typing a half a page of meaningless grawlix. It probably didn’t help that different portions were written by different people, on different typewriters/computers, and the copy I was working from had been through at least one and probably more generations of photocopying.