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David Overton's Blog » How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)

As you know I have been away on holiday and I fly away again tomorrow.  While I was traveling I asked my dad to send me a recipe for some scones.  He was unable to find the OCR tool in Office 2007, but with the help of OneNote 2007 it was very easy.  Paste the image you wish to OCR into OneNote and let it do the rest.  I found the answer at OneNote 2007: OCR Rocks this researcher's world | Techwillow where there is more information, but in summary:

This is how it works: Take any image of text, paste it into OneNote, right-click on it and select Copy Text from Picture. That's it, you can then paste it anywhere as text. What's more OneNote will automatically OCR and index all your images (if you enable this in the settings) so you can search through your clippings.

image

Now, of course you might not have OneNote, but that does not mean you don't get scanning.  As the project at http://www.codeproject.com/office/modi.asp points out, you can use their code and the Office 2007 scanning tools to make it work too.

 

ttfn

David

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Posted Sun, Oct 28 2007 10:44 PM by David Overton
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Comments

wayne wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Thu, Dec 11 2008 3:32 PM

Hey,

I've had OneNote for years and didn't know I could make OCR this easy.

Your post has saved me a lot of time and frustration.

Many, many thanks!

OcDex wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Mon, Dec 15 2008 1:10 PM

Thanks... that was very easy and useful

zohreh wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Mon, Dec 22 2008 7:55 PM

hey David,

thx for the very useful guideline. It was very helpful.

Amir wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Wed, Jan 21 2009 4:43 PM

Thank you

Basi (South Africa) wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Sat, Jan 31 2009 9:16 PM

David, thank you, thank you, thank you so much.

Was about to give up, & searched Google, and voila! I came across a life-saver!

Thanks again David, Keep up the good work. We (incl. your employer, need people like you)

Bill wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Tue, Mar 24 2009 11:00 PM

I'm sure this very valuable information in somewhere in the OneNote user guide but if you do not know what to look for you might not find it.

As others have said, your helpful note is so very much appreciated.

Thank you and may God bless you richly!

CJ wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Tue, Apr 14 2009 7:17 PM

This was fairly easy to use, but 90% of the text is garbled. Any ideas on how to reduce this problem?

David Overton wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Tue, Apr 14 2009 8:59 PM

CJ - is the image a black and white image or grey scale?  B&W is much better in my humble opinion.

Thanks

David

Peter wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Sun, May 10 2009 8:53 AM

Thanks very much, David. I didn't know of OneNote's existence and it's OCR-function until finding your site thanks to Google. Made life a lot easier.

Thanks again.

Peter

RACHID wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Thu, Jun 11 2009 9:14 AM

thanks good man , you shared a great information ... good luck all over your life line

wes wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Fri, Jul 3 2009 8:39 PM

I have this question. Can you use OCR and combine multiple pages into a single document?

wes wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Sat, Jul 4 2009 2:01 AM

Dave: Is it possible to merge OCR individual pages so as to come up with one complete document? If so, how do you do it?

clauds wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Thu, Aug 20 2009 2:17 PM

wow, really useful. made my work waayyy easier!! thanks! :)

Mostafa Soltan wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Tue, Dec 15 2009 12:50 PM

thanks a milion from Egypt :D

Mostafa

you are amazing David

prashanth T wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Thu, Jan 14 2010 11:23 AM

Iam very greatful to you .thank you !

volto wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Tue, Feb 23 2010 12:33 AM

AW FREAKIN SWEET thanks!

dr sumit grover wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Sat, May 8 2010 8:18 AM

thanks a lot for this tip u made my day

Andy T wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Tue, Jul 27 2010 2:21 PM

Many thanks for this tip David. Like others I've been using One Note for a few years without knowing about this. I've also recently changed to Office 10 and thought that the OCR had gone for ever.

Cheers

Andy

Anonymous wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Sat, Jul 31 2010 9:51 PM

muchas gracias, fue un gran aporte para mi

Joseph

Eduardo Esteves wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Thu, May 19 2011 4:51 PM

Muito obrigado (from Portugal).

Eduardo

sujay wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Thu, Jun 16 2011 7:53 PM

I have done as u told till "Copy Text from Picture"...when i pasted it...shows in different format...help me!

David Overton wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Fri, Jun 17 2011 8:04 AM

Sujay,

You are copying the text - it is quite likely that it may then fail to keep the formatting, but hopefully it is less work to apply formatting than to re-type it all.

Thanks

David

James wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Tue, Jun 21 2011 3:57 AM

Actualy a better option in one note is to right click the image and select "Make Text Selectable In Image". This retains the image as the format of the document and when you do a search in one note the image is included in the searche results (if it contains the text).

luiz antonio wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Sat, Jun 16 2012 3:52 PM

thanks a milion from Brazil :D

ASHISH KUMAR wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Sat, Sep 15 2012 8:26 AM

Hey,

I've had OneNote for years and didn't know I could make OCR this easy.

Your post has saved me a lot of time and frustration.

Many, many thanks to....!

Larry wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Sat, Jun 7 2014 1:15 AM

David Thank you Thank you The info saved my day. Took a picture and tryed to put it in the text box of a ad. I could not figure out how to do this. Had one note but had never used it. Thanks again.

David E wrote re: How to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in Office 2007 (using OneNote or a small tool)
on Wed, Nov 16 2016 6:00 AM

Fantastic tip, David. Thanks a million!

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