USER’S GUIDE
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C O N T E N T S 5 WELCOME New features in OmniPage 16 INSTALLATION AND SETUP System requirements Installing OmniPage Setting up your scanner with OmniPage How to start the program Registering your software Activating OmniPage Uninstalling the software OmniPage Documents The OmniPage Desktop and Views Basic Processing Steps How to use OmniPage with PaperPort DOCUMENTS Processing methods Defining the source of page images Describing the layout of the document Preprocessing Images Zones and backgrounds
User dictionaries Languages Training Text and image editing On-the-fly editing Marking and redacting Reading text aloud Creating and editing forms SAVING AND EXPORTING Saving and Exporting Saving original images Saving recognition results Sending pages by mail Other export targets WORKFLOWS Workflow Assistant Batch Manager Creating new jobs Watched folders Watched mailboxes Barcode processing File-it Assistant TECHNICAL INFORMATION Troubleshooting INDEX 4 Contents 51 52 52 54 56 57 58 60 63 63 6
Welcome Welcome to this OmniPage® 16 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 16. 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.
Online Help OmniPage online Help contains information on features, settings, and procedures. It also has a comprehensive glossary, with its own alphabetical index and a table of contents. The online Help is provided as HTML help, and has been designed for quick and easy information retrieval. Online Help is available after you install OmniPage. Comprehensive context-sensitive help aims to provide just enough assistance to let you keep working without delay. It is available from dialog boxes.
New features in OmniPage 16 Here are some main areas of innovation compared to OmniPage 15. If you are upgrading, you may not need to consult this guide very much. • Three screen views: Choose from Classic (as in OmniPage 15), Flexible and Quick Convert View (all main controls on a single panel). See Chapter 2. • Multiple documents. In Classic or Flexible view you can have two or more documents open at one time, for easy cross-document editing.
New features unique to OmniPage Professional 16 • Extracting data from filled forms: A new workflow step allows data to be extracted from sets of forms and exported to databases, based on a PDF form template. The forms can be active PDF forms, static forms in a range of image formats or scanned paper forms. • Marking and redacting: Text can be highlighted, struckout or redacted (made unreadable) in the Text Editor. Redacting is useful for legal documents or for those with confidential content.
Installation and setup This chapter provides information on installing and starting OmniPage. System requirements The minimum requirements to install and run OmniPage 16 are: • A computer with an Intel® Pentium® III processor or equivalent. Intel Core Duo, Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD X2 Dual Core 3600+ recommended. • Windows 2000 (from Service Pack 4), Windows XP 32bit (from Service Pack 2), Windows XP 64-bit, and Windows Vista 32-bit or 64-bit. • Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5.
• A Windows compatible pointing device. • 4 megapixel digital camera or higher for digital camera text capture • A compatible scanner with its own scanner driver software, if you plan to scan documents. See the Scanner Guide at Nuance’s web site (www.nuance.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.
To install OmniPage: 1. Insert the OmniPage 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 EndUser License Agreement and enter the serial number shown on the CD envelope. 3. Choose a complete or a custom installation.
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. 12 • 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.
• 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.
How to start the program To start OmniPage 16 do one of the following: • Click Start in the Windows taskbar and choose All Programs > ScanSoft OmniPage 16 > OmniPage [Professional] 16. •Double-click the OmniPage 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” in the next Chapter.
• • Click the OmniPage Agent icon on the taskbar. Choose a workflow to start the program and run the workflow. Use OmniPage 16 with Nuance’s PaperPort® document management product, to add OCR services. See “How to use OmniPage with PaperPort” in the Using OmniPage chapter. Registering your software Nuance’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.
containing recognition results or any of the following user-created files: Zone templates (*.zon) Image enhancement templates (*.ipp) Training files (*.otn) User dictionaries (*.ud) OmniPage Documents (*.opd) Job files (*.opj) Workflow files (*.xwf) To uninstall from Windows 2000, XP or Vista you must be logged into your computer with administrator privileges. To uninstall or reinstall OmniPage: • Close OmniPage.
Using OmniPage OmniPage 16 uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology to transform text from scanned pages or image files into editable text for use in your favorite computer applications. In addition to text recognition, OmniPage can retain the following elements and attributes of a document through the OCR process.
more portable. To embed a file, open the relevant dialog box from the Tools menu, select the desired file and click Embed. Use the Extract button to get a local copy of an embedded file inside an OPD you have received. When you open an OmniPage Document, its settings are applied, replacing those existing in the program. The OmniPage Desktop and Views OmniPage comes with three different views to suit your task the best.
Image, Thumbnails and the Text Editor. The Page Image has an Image toolbar and the Text Editor has a Formatting toolbar. Standard Toolbar OmniPage Toolbox Formatting toolbar Thumbnails Image toolbar Document Manager Page Image Text Editor OmniPage toolbox: This Toolbox lets you drive the processing. Thumbnails panel: This displays page thumbnails. Document Manager: This provides an overview of your document with a table. Each row represents one page.
Flexible View Use this view to set up the OmniPage workspace so that it fits your task optimally. Suggested scenarios: Maximizing workspace (single screen) Load a document. Open the panels you want to use. Grab them by their captions one by one, and drag them so that they dock behind the active one as tabs. You can also dock online Help to avoid handling two separate windows. Working with recognition results (single screen) Load a document and have it recognized.
Verifying (dual-screen) Place the Page Image on one screen and the Text Editor on the other. This gives you more space for editing and proofing. The Page Image is always available for verifying recognition and for performing on-the-fly zoning and editing. The scenarios presented above are only examples to give you an idea of what you can do in Flexible View. QuickConvert View Use the QuickConvert View for fast recognition and saving.
The Toolbars The program has eleven main toolbars. Use the View menu to show, hide or customize them. Status bar texts at the bottom edge of the OmniPage program window explain the purpose of all tools. Standard toolbar: Performs basic functions. Image toolbar: Performs image, zoning and table operations. Three of its tool groups can now be handled separately (mini-toolbars): • Zones toolbar: Offers zoning tools. • Rotate toolbar: Provides rotating tools.
To float a panel anywhere on the screen, keep CTRL pushed while dragging. To dock it, drag the panel over the OmniPage main window, hold down the left mouse button and start pressing space to see all possible docking positions. To select a given position, release the mouse button. Basic Processing Steps There are three ways of handling documents: with automatic, manual or workflow processing. The basic steps for all processing methods are broadly the same: 1. Bring a set of images into OmniPage.
Settings The Options dialog box is the central location for OmniPage settings. Access it from the Standard toolbar or the Tools menu. Context-sensitive help provides information on each setting. How to use OmniPage with PaperPort The PaperPort® program is a paper management software product from Nuance. It lets you link pages with suitable applications. Pages can contain pictures, text or both.
Processing documents This tutorial chapter describes different ways you can process a document and also provides information on key parts of this processing. Processing methods Using OmniPage, you can choose from the following processing methods: Automatic A fast and easy way to process documents is to let OmniPage do it automatically for you. Select settings in the Options dialog box and in the OmniPage Toolbox drop-down lists and then click Start.
2. Manually zone pages where you want to process only part of the page or if you want to give precise zoning instructions. Use ignore backgrounds or zones to exclude areas from processing. Use process backgrounds or zones to specify areas to be autozoned. 3. Use button two to have the pages recognized. 4. Do proofing and editing as desired. 5. Use button three to save your results. The default for manual processing is to have all entered pages automatically selected.
Its shortcut menu lists your workflows. Click a workflow to launch OmniPage and have it run. Let the Workflow Assistant guide you in creating new workflows. It provides a choice of steps and the settings they need. Click Next after each step to add another one. You can use the Assistant just to get more guidance when doing automatic processing. See “Workflow Assistant” in Chapter 6.
(File Menu in applications apart from MS Office 2007) open the door to OCR facilities. How to set up Direct OCR Start the application you want connected to OmniPage. Start OmniPage, open the Options dialog box at the General panel and select Enable Direct OCR. In the target application, go to Add-Ins (or the File menu in applications other than Office 2007) > OmniPage > Acquire Text Settings > Direct OCR, and specify OCR, Scanner, Output Format and Direct OCR settings.
6. If proofing was specified, this follows recognition. Then the recognized text is placed at the cursor position in your application, with the formatting level specified by Acquire Text Settings... . Defining the source of page images There are two possible image sources: from image files and from a scanner. There are two main types of scanners: flatbed or sheetfed. A scanner may have a built-in or added Automatic Document Feeder (ADF), which makes it easier to scan multi-page documents.
Input from digital camera You can bring digital camera photos of documents for recognition into OmniPage. First, make sure that your device driver is installed properly. Then connect the camera and download images. Click Load Digital Camera Files in the Get Page drop-down list. If you use this, 3D Deskew, resolution enhancement and straightening text lines are automatically performed on images. You can also do manual 3D deskewing, see the section “Image Enhancement tools” later in this Chapter.
(not much difference between light and dark) and with text on colored or shaded backgrounds. Scan color Select this to scan in color. This will function only with color scanners. Choose this if you want colored graphics, texts or backgrounds in the output document. For OCR accuracy, it offers no more benefit than grayscale scanning, but will require much more time, memory resources and disk space. Brightness and contrast Good brightness and contrast settings play an important role in OCR accuracy.
dialog box, and define a pause value in seconds. Then the scanner will make scanning passes automatically, pausing between each scan by the defined number of seconds, giving you time to place the next page. Document to document conversion In OmniPage Professional 16 you can open not only image files, but also documents created in wordprocessing and similar applications. Supported file types include .doc, .xls, .ppt, .rtf, .wpd and others.
Single column, no table Choose this setting if your pages contain only one column of text and no table. Business letters or pages from a book are normally like this. Multiple columns, no table Choose this if some of your pages contain text in columns and you want this decolumnized or kept in separate columns, similar to the original layout. Single column with table Choose this if your page contains only one column of text and a table.
Template Choose a zone template file if you wish to have its background value, zones and properties applied to all acquired pages from now on. The template zones are also applied to the current page, replacing any existing zones. If auto-zoning yielded unexpected recognition results, use manual processing to rezone individual pages and re-recognize them. Preprocessing Images To improve OCR results, you can enhance your images before zoning and recognition using the Image Enhancement tools.
appearance. If characters are thick and touching, lighten the brightness. If characters are thin and broken, darken it. Use the OCR Brightness tool to optimize the image. Unsuitable Tolerable Good Best Good Tolerable Unsuitable Image Enhancement Tools The Image Enhancement tools can also be used to edit images to save and use them as image files. Note that some these tools work on the Primary image, others on the one used for OCR (OCR image).
the left panel to become the new starting image for further enhancement. The following tools are accessible on the toolbar: Pointer (F5) - the Pointer is a neutral tool carrying out different operations under different circumstances (for example, to pick a color for the Fill operation, or to catch the deskew line.) Zoom (F6) - click the tool then use the left mouse button to zoom in on your image or the right mouse button to zoom out.
Hue / Saturation / Lightness - click this tool then use the sliders to modify the hue, saturation and lightness of your primary image. Crop - if you decide to use only a given part of your image, click the Crop tool then select the area to keep and the rest of the image will be removed. Rotate - click this tool to rotate (by 90, 180 or 270 degrees) and/or flip your image, or its selected area. Despeckle - click this tool to remove stray dots from your image. Despeckle works on the OCR image at 4 levels.
Fill - use this tool to apply uniform coloring to selected areas. 3D Deskew works by snapping the distorted image to a grid. All you need to do is to manually straighten this grid, and image coordinates will follow - see illustration below (before - after 3D Deskew). Using Image Enhancement History To commit or undo your image edits (one by one or all the steps), use the History panel in the Image Enhancement window.
To create and store an image enhancement template, first bring an image file into the Image Enhancement window, then carry out your preprocessing steps and add them to the History clicking the Apply button. When you are done, choose Save Enhancement Template from the File menu. Browse to your preferred destination and save the template file (with the extension .ipp).
Process areas (in process zones or backgrounds) are auto-zoned when they are sent to recognition. Ignore areas (in ignore zones or backgrounds) are dropped from processing. No text is recognized and no image is transferred. Automatic zoning Automatic zoning allows the program to detect blocks of text, headings, pictures and other elements on a page and draw zones to enclose them. You can Auto-zone a whole page or a part of it. Automatically drawn zones and template zones have solid borders.
Process zone Use this to draw a process zone, to define a page area where auto-zoning will run. After recognition, this zone will be replaced by one or more zones with automatically determined zone types. Ignore zone Use this to draw an ignore zone, to define a page area you do not want transferred to the Text Editor. Text zone Use this to draw a text zone. Draw it over a single block of text. Zone contents will be treated as flowing text, without columns being found.
Working with zones The Image toolbar provides zone editing tools. Grouped tools can be undocked/floated an redocked as a separate mini toolbar for convenience. One is always selected. When you no longer want the service of a tool, click a different tool. Some tools on this toolbar are grouped. If docked as a single tool, only the last selected tool from the group is visible. To select a visible tool, click it.
When you draw a new zone that partly overlaps an existing zone of a different type, it does not really overlap it; the new zone replaces the overlapped part of the existing zone. The following zone types are prohibited: Speed zoning lets you do manual zoning quickly. Activate the zone selection cursor, then move the cursor over the page image. Shaded areas will appear showing the auto-detected zones. Double-click to transform a shaded area into a zone.
Using zone templates A template contains a page background value and a set of zones and their properties, stored in a file. A zone template file can be loaded to have template zones used during recognition. Load a template file in the Layout Description drop-down list or from the Tools menu. You can browse to network locations to load templates created by others.
How to save a zone template Select a background value and prepare zones on a page. Check their locations and properties. Click Zone Template... in the Tools menu. In the dialog box, select [zones on page] and click Save, then assign a name and optionally a different path. Choose a network location to share the template file. Click OK. The new zone template remains loaded. How to modify a zone template Load the template and acquire a suitable image with manual processing. The template zones appear.
How to include a template file in an OPD Open a document, then click Tools and choose Zone Template. Select the one you want to include and click Embed. Then save the document to the OPD format. This means the template will travel with the OPD if it is sent to a new location. When the OPD file is opened later, the included zone template will be shown in the Zone Template Files dialog box as [embedded] and can be saved to a new named template file at the new location by using the Extract button.
Proofing and editing Recognition results are placed in the Text Editor. These can be recognized texts, tables, forms and embedded graphics. This WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor is detailed in this chapter. The editor display and views The Text Editor displays recognized texts and can mark words that were suspected during recognition with red, wavy underlines. They are displayed with red characters in the OCR Proofreader.
Plain Text view This displays plain decolumnized left-aligned text in a single font and font size, with the same line breaks as in the original document. Formatted Text view This displays decolumnized text with font and paragraph styling. True Page view True Page® view tries to conserve as much of the formatting of the original document as possible. Character and paragraph styling is retained. Reading order can be displayed by arrows.
Change All to implement the change and move to the next suspect word. Click Add to add the changed word to the current user dictionary and move to the next suspect word. 5. Color markers are removed from words in the Text Editor as they are proofread. You can switch to the Text Editor during proofing to make corrections there. Use the Resume button to restart proofing. Click Page Ready to skip to the next page and Document Ready or Close to stop proofreading before the end of the document is reached. 6.
To turn the Verifier on, click the Verifier tool or press F9. To turn it off, click the Verifier tool again, press F9 again, or press Esc. A full list of verifier keyboard shortcuts is available in the Online Help. The Character Map The Character Map is a dockable tool giving you aid in proofing. It is used for essentially two purposes: • to insert characters during proofing and editing that are not or not easily accessible from your keyboard.
User dictionaries The program has built-in dictionaries for many languages. These assist during recognition and may offer suggestions during proofing. They can be supplemented by user dictionaries. You can save any number of user dictionaries, but only one can be loaded at a time. A dictionary called Custom is the default user dictionary for Microsoft Word.
Languages The program can read over 110 languages with three alphabets: Latin, Greek and Cyrillic. See the list in the OCR panel of the Options dialog box. It shows which languages have dictionary support. A listing is also provided on the Nuance web site. In addition to user dictionaries, specialized dictionaries are available for certain professions (currently medical, legal and financial) for some languages. See the list and make selections in the OCR panel of the Options dialog box.
the Check Training dialog box lists these. Incorrect words should be re-trained before the list is approved. IntelliTrain IntelliTrain is an automated form of training. It takes input from the corrections you make during proofing. When you make a change, it remembers the character shape involved, and your proofing change. It searches other similar character shapes in the document, especially in suspect words. It assesses whether to apply the user correction or not.
A training file can be also edited; its name appears in the title bar. If it has unsaved training added to it, an asterisk appears after its name. Both the unsaved and the modified training are saved when you close the dialog box. The Edit Training dialog box displays frames containing a character shape and an OCR solution assigned to that shape. Click a frame to select it. Then you can delete it with the Delete key, or change the assignation. Use arrow keys to move to the next or previous frame.
Paragraph styles Paragraph styles are auto-detected during recognition. A list of styles is built up and presented in a selection box on the left of the Formatting toolbar. Use this to assign a style to selected paragraphs. Graphics You can edit the contents of a selected graphic if you have an image editor in your computer. Click Edit Picture With in the Format menu. Here you can choose to use the image editor associated with BMP files in your Windows system, and load the graphic.
Frames have gray borders and enclose one or more boxes. They are placed when a visible border is detected in an image. Format frame and table borders and shading with a shortcut menu or by choosing Table... in the Format menu. Text box shading can be specified from its shortcut menu. Multicolumn areas have orange borders and enclose one or more boxes. They are auto-detected and show which text will be treated as flowing columns when exported with the Flowing Page formatting level.
Click this to turn on-the-fly editing off. Your zoning changes are stored; the on-the-fly tool displays a green signal to show there are stored changes. To activate these changes, do one of the following: Click the on-the-fly tool with a green signal. The zoning changes will cause changes in the Text Editor. Click the Perform OCR button to have the whole page (re)recognized, including your zone changes.
To find and redact text by searching, select Find and Mark Text from the Edit menu to display the Find, Replace and Mark Text dialog box. Search for text to be marked for redaction. Step through all occurrences and decide for each case whether to redact immediately or mark for redaction. In the latter case, perform the redaction by choosing Close and Redact Document in the Mark Text dialog box or later click the Redact Document button.
From start of sentence to insertion point Ctrl + Numpad 4 Current page Ctrl + Numpad 3 From top of current page to insertion point Ctrl + Home From insertion point to end of current page Ctrl + End Previous, next or any page Ctrl + PgUp, PgDown or navigation buttons Typed characters Each typed character is pronounced separately. The Text-to-Speech facility is enabled or disabled with the Tools menu item Speech Mode or with the F10 key. A second menu item Speech Settings...
Creating and editing forms You can bring paper or electronic forms (distributed mainly as PDF in an office environment) into OmniPage Professional 16, recognize them and edit their content, layout or both - in True Page view.
Comb: Use this tool to create a text field consisting of boxes. This is typically used for information such as ZIP codes. Checkbox: Click this tool and draw Checkboxes - typically for Yes/No questions and marking one or more choices. Circle text: Its function is similar to the Checkbox element (above): the Circle text tool creates elements that get encircled when selected. Table: This tool creates tables in your form.
or the properties of any form element here. Use the following commands: Form Object Appearance - use the tabs Borders, Shading and Shadow to design the look of your form elements in a similar way as you would do in a text-editing application. Form Object Properties - this command gives you access to the element properties such as size, position, name. Note that properties dynamically vary depending on what type of element you select. Extracting Form Data Form data extraction is a new workflow step.
Saving and exporting Once you have acquired at least one image for a document, you can export the image(s) to file. Once you have recognized at least one page, you can export recognition results – a single page, selected pages or the whole document – to a target application by saving to file, copying to Clipboard or sending to a mailing application. Saving as an OmniPage Document is always possible. OmniPage provides comprehensive support for Office 2007 applications and formats.
click the Export Results button to begin export. You can also perform exporting through the Process menu. Saving original images You can save original images to disk in a wide variety of file types with or without image enhancement (using the Image Enhancement Tools). 1. Choose Save to File in the Export Results drop-down list. In the dialog box that appears, select Image under Save as. 2. Choose a folder location and a file type. Type in a file name. 3.
Saving recognition results You can save recognized pages to disk in a wide variety of file types. 1. Choose Export Results... in the File menu, or click the Export Results button in the OmniPage Toolbox with Save to File selected in the drop-down list. 2. The Save to File dialog box appears. Select Text under Save as. 3. Select a folder location and a file type for your document. Select a page range, file options, naming options and a formatting level for the document.
The formatting levels are: Plain Text This exports plain decolumnized left-aligned text in a single font and font size. When exporting to Text or Unicode file types, graphics and tables are not supported. You can export plain text to nearly all file types and target applications; in these cases graphics, tables and bullets can be retained. Formatted Text This exports decolumnized text with font and paragraph styling, along with graphics and tables. This is available for nearly all file types.
When exporting to Microsoft Excel, 'Spreadsheet' is good for saving whole-page tables. Prefer 'Formatted Text' if your document contains smaller tables: each table will be placed on a separate worksheet with non-table parts placed in an index worksheet with hyperlinks to each relevant worksheet Selecting converter options Click the Converter Options... button in a saving dialog box to have precise control over the export.
Saving OmniPage Documents Use a workflow with two saving steps, or perform two separate saves. Saving to two targets For instance, you cannot use a multiple converter to save a document to file and also send it in mail. Use a workflow with two saving steps, or perform two separate saves. Saving different page ranges You cannot save different page ranges to different file types, because only one set of selected pages can exist at saving time. For the same reason, a single workflow cannot be used either.
PDF with image substitutes: As for PDF (Normal), but words containing reject and suspect characters have image overlays, so these uncertain words display as they were in the original document. The PDF file can be viewed, searched and edited. PDF Image (formerly PDF, image only): The original images are exported. The PDF file is viewable only and cannot be modified in a PDF editor and text cannot be searched. Besides the above flavors, you can use other parameters in defining your PDF output: PDF 1.
Sending pages by mail You can send page images or recognized pages as one or more files attached to a mail message if you have installed a MAPI-compliant mail application, such as Microsoft Outlook. To send pages by e-mail: • With automatic processing, select Send in Mail as the setting in the Export Results drop-down list on the OmniPage Toolbox. The Export Options dialog box appears as soon as the last available page in the document is recognized or proofed.
Workflows A workflow contains a series of processing steps and their settings. It can be saved for repeated use whenever you have a task needing the same processing. Workflows usually begin with a scanning or loading step, but they can also start from the document currently open in OmniPage. After that, they do not have to conform to the traditional 1-2-3 processing pattern. Usually a workflow will include a recognition step, but this is not compulsory.
down list. Choose one then click the Workflow Assistant button to see its steps and settings. Running workflows Here is how to run a sample workflow or one you have created: 1. If your workflow takes input from scanner, place your document in its ADF or its first page on the scanner bed. 2. Select the desired workflow from the Workflow drop-down list. 3. Press the Start button. The OmniPage Toolbox displays the steps in the workflow and acts as a progress monitor.
These settings are typically applied if the workflow runs unattended - if your workflow is so, remember to include a saving step. You can also run workflows from an OmniPage Agent icon on the Windows taskbar. Right-click it for a shortcut menu listing your workflows. Select one to run it. OmniPage will be launched if necessary.
Workflow Assistant This allows you to create and modify workflows. The Job Wizard also uses this to create or modify workflows that jobs execute - see the next section. The Assistant offers one or more steps, each with a drop-down list. This left panel of the Workflow Assistant dialog box lets you build your workflow. . This shows the steps you have chosen. This shows the possible steps at any given workflow position. Use this to add a new step to your workflow. Specify settings for current step here.
At any moment in the process, the Assistant dropdown menu offers all steps that are logically possible at that point. In OmniPage 16 Professional, additional steps are available: Extract Form Data and Mark Text. Creating workflows Select New Workflow... in the Workflow drop-down list, or from the Process menu. Or click the Workflow Assistant button in the Standard toolbar when no workflow is selected.
Modifying workflows Select the workflow you want to modify in the Workflow drop-down list and click the Workflow Assistant button in the standard toolbar. Or choose Workflows... in the Tools menu, select the desired workflow and click Modify... . The first panel of the Workflow Assistant appears with the workflow loaded. Click the icon in the workflow diagram that represents the step you want to modify. Click the downward pointing arrow under the icon to replace this step with another one.
Creating new jobs Open the Batch Manager from the Process Menu or from your system, by choosing Start > All Programs > ScanSoft OmniPage 16 > OmniPage Batch Manager or from the OmniPage Agent on the taskbar. Creating a job is basically timing a workflow. To do this, start the Batch Manager (as described above) and click the Create Job icon or choose Create Job from the File menu. The Job Wizard starts. First you need to define your job type.
Lotus Notes mailbox watching job: Same as above, but a Lotus Notes inbox is watched. Name your job and click Next. The next panel shows Start and Stop Options. Specify Start and End Time here, recurrency pattern (for recurrent jobs) and set if the input files are to be deleted when the job is completed. If you wish, you can set e-mail notification as well.
Make the desired changes as already described for workflows. See “Modifying workflows” above. Managing and running jobs This is done with the Batch Manager. It presents two panels. The left panel lists each job, its next run, status and history. The status will be: Waiting: Scheduled but job start time is in the future. Running: Processing is currently underway. Watching: Watching is in progress but there is no processing.
Activate Job in the File menu serves to activate any inactive job immediately. Deactivate Job in the File menu deactivates any active job. If the job is running, this will stop it before deactivating. Choose this to close a Watch type job immediately to save its result. Stop Job in the File menu stops a job with status Starting, Running, or Paused. Pause Job is available for jobs with status Running or Starting. To modify such a job’s timing instructions you must stop it.
following the steps of the workflow. It displays input and output at each stage. Job results are marked by icons. Drop-down lists give you information about processing steps. Watched folders In OmniPage Professional 16, you can specify watched folders and e-mail inboxes (Outlook and Lotus Notes) as job input. These allow processing to be started automatically whenever image files are placed in pre-defined folders or arrive into inboxes as e-mail attachments.
Add the desired folders and file types (one type or all types). Click the checkbox in front of your selected folder to include its subfolders as well. To enable a number of file types, add the Folder repeatedly, once for each type. Add a checkmark to watch subfolders of the selected folder as well. When you reach the next panel of the Job Wizard, you set the timing instructions: a starting time and an end time for the watching to occur.
Barcode processing In OmniPage Professional 16, you can run workflows (sets of steps and their settings) using barcode cover pages that define which workflow should run. A barcode cover page identifies a workflow (with workflow identifier, workflow name and workflow steps) and contains information on workflow creation (name of the creator, date of creation, etc.). Note that barcode processing cannot be recurrent.
to Prompt for workflow. In this case Prompt for workflow is selected in the Scanner panel, a dialog box appears with the available choices: Scanning, Barcode cover page workflow, and all scanning workflows. All available pages will be processed by the specified workflow, or until a new barcode page is encountered. The result will be saved as specified by the workflow. For image input you must create a barcode cover page job. A barcode cover page job uses a special kind of watched folder.
can also place just a barcode cover page image file in the watched folder, then have a network scanner make and send image files there. File-it Assistant The File-it Assistant lets you create scanning workflows for repeated document conversion tasks. The Assistant is for scanning jobs that require no user interaction during the processing.
2. Push the OmniPage-associated scanner button. The document will be converted using workflow settings and sent to the location you defined. It is possible to use barcode cover pages stored as image files to drive jobs from watched folders. Such jobs permit interactive steps like manual zoning and proofing that are not available via the Fileit-Assistant.
Technical information This chapter provides troubleshooting and other technical information about using OmniPage 16. Please also read the online Readme file and other help topics, or visit the Nuance web pages. Troubleshooting Although OmniPage is designed to be easy to use, problems sometimes occur. Many of the error messages contain selfexplanatory descriptions of what to do – check connections, close other applications to free up memory, and so on.
• • • • Use the software that came with your scanner to verify that the scanner works properly before using it with OmniPage. Make sure you have the correct drivers for your scanner, printer, and video card. Visit Nuance’s web page through the Help menu and consult its scanner section for more information. Defragment your hard disk. See Windows online Help for more information.
• If OmniPage runs in safe mode, then a device driver on your system may be interfering with OmniPage operation. Troubleshoot the problem by restarting Windows in Step-by-Step Confirmation mode. See Windows online Help for more information. Text does not get recognized properly Try these solutions if any part of the original document is not converted to text properly during OCR: • Look at the original page image and ensure that all text areas are enclosed by text zones.
• • • • • Make sure the correct document languages are selected in the OCR panel of the Options dialog box. Only languages included in the document should be selected. Turn IntelliTrain on and make some proofing corrections. This is most likely to help with stylized fonts or uniformly degraded documents. If IntelliTrain was running, try turning it off – on some types of degraded documents it may not be able to help. Do some manual training, or edit existing training to remove unsuccessful training.
System or performance problems during OCR Try these solutions if a crash occurs during OCR or if processing takes a very long time: • Check image quality. Consult your scanner documentation on ways to improve the quality of scanned images. • Break complex page images (lots of text and graphics or elaborate formatting) into smaller jobs. Draw zones manually or modify automatically created zones and perform OCR on one page area at a time. See “Working with zones” in the Processing documents Chapter.
WordPerfect 12, X3 Text, Text with line breaks, Text - Formatted, Text - Comma Separated Unicode Text, Unicode Text with line breaks, Unicode Text Formatted, Unicode Text - Comma Separated Wave Audio Converter (to save recognized text being read aloud) In OmniPage Professional 16 there is also support for: eBook, Microsoft InfoPath (for forms), Microsoft Reader, and XML.
Index Symbols Auto-zoning 69 B Numerics 3D Deskew 32, 41 Backgrounds for zoning 37 A Accuracy improvement 30, 52, 89 influence of brightness 31 influence of training 52 scanning influence 30 Acquire Text menu items 28 Activating OmniPage 15 Adding to zones 42 training to training files 53 words to user dictionary 48 ADF 29, 31 Advanced saving options 67 Advice on problems 87 Alphanumeric zones 40 Attachments to mail 70 Auto-detect layout 32 Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) 29, 31 Automatic
Deskewing digital camera 37 Desktop 18 Desktop launching of workflows 73 Despeckle (E) 37 Dictionaries 48 Digital camera input 30, 37 Direct OCR 27 Disabling job running 78 Disk space 9 Document Layout, Form 33 Document Manager 18, 19 Document Ready button 72 Document to document conversion 32, 38 Documents copying to Clipboard 70 double-sided 32 exporting 63 in OmniPage 17 layout description 32 saving 63 with varied layout 32 Double-sided documents 31 Drawing zones in Direct OCR 29 Dropout color
Frames 55, 66, 90 G Graphic tool (F) 60 Graphic zone 41 Graphics editing 55 in export 65 Grayscale images 64 scanning 31 Grouping elements 55 H Header/footer indicators 47 Hearing texts read aloud 59 Hiding / showing markers 47 Image Panel 18 Image toolbar 18 Images backgrounds 39 black-and-white 64 color 64 editing 55 grayscale 64 quality 31 resolution 64, 89 saving 64 substitutes in PDF 69 Improving accuracy 30, 53, 89 Increasing memory 89 Input from image file 29 from PDF files 29 Input from dig
Microsoft Outlook 70 Microsoft Word, opening PDF files in 69 Minimum system requirements 9 Modifying image quality 34 jobs 78 tables 43, 55 zone templates 45 zones 42 MRC compression 69 Multicolumn areas 55 Multi-page image files 64 Multiple column pages 33 Multiple converters 67 N New features 7 Non-dictionary words 47 Non-printing characters 47 Numeric zones 40 O OCR Batch Manager 76 checking OCR results 49 OmniPage activating 15 documents in 17 earlier versions 10 installing 10 new features 8 r
step-by-step 27 steps, overview 18 with workflows 72 Professional dictionaries Repeated exporting 63 Replacing zone templates 45 Professional version 8 Proofing in a workflow 72 options 48 Properties of zones 40 Purpose of training 52 Purpose of workflows 71 Resolution 64, 89 Resolution (E) 37 Retaining paragraph styles 65 Re-training 52 Rotate (E) 37 Running Batch Manager jobs workflows 72 Q S Quality of images 31 QuickConvert View 18, Safe mode 88 Sample image files 88 Saving and launching 65 as O
Storing zoning changes 57 Striking out text 57 Suggestions in proofing 48 Suspect words 47 Synchronize Views (E) 36 System or performance problems during OCR 91 System requirements 9 T Table tool (F) 61 Tables editing 55 editing dividers 43 in single column pages 33 Timing of jobs 82 Toolbar docking / floating 49 Training 52 automatic 53 IntelliTrain 53 manual 52 training files 54 Troubleshooting 87 True Page editing 55 True Page export 66 True Page view 48 TWAIN scanner drivers 12 Types of zones
numeric 40 process 41 properties 40 replacing templates 44 saving templates 44 table 41, 43 templates 34, 44, 89 types 40, 89 unloading templates 45 working with 42 (E)=Image Enhancement Zoning in a workflow 72 Tool (F)=Form Drawing or Zoning on-the-fly 57 Zoom (E) 36 Arrangement Tool Zooming displays 19, (Professional only) 49 OmniPage 16 User’s Guide 99
THIRD PARTY LICENSES/NOTICES The Independent JPEG Group's software, copyright © 1991-1995, Thomas G. Lane. This software is based, in part, on the work of the Independent JPEG Group, Colosseum Builders, Inc., the FreeType Team, and Catharon Productions, Inc. Zlib copyright © 1995-1998 Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler. This product was developed using Kakadu software. The word verification, spelling and hyphenation portions of this product are based in part on Proximity Linguistic Technology.
