User’s Guide
L E G A L N O TIC ES Copyright © 2011 Nuance Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted, transcribed, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or translated into any language or computer language in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, magnetic, optical, chemical, manual, or otherwise, without prior written consent from Nuance Communications, Inc., 1 Wayside Road, Burlington, Massachusetts 01803-4609.
C O N T E N T S WELCOME 5 New features in OmniPage 18 New features in OmniPage 17 Key features in OmniPage Professional I NS TA LL AT IO N 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 USING OMNIPAGE OmniPage Documents The OmniPage Desktop and Views Basic Processing Steps How to use OmniPage with PaperPort PROCESSING D O C U M EN TS Processing methods Defining
S AV IN G AND EXPORTING Saving and Exporting Saving original images Saving recognition results Sending pages by mail Sending to Kindle Other export targets W O R K F LO WS Workflow Assistant Batch Manager Creating new jobs Watched folders Watched mailboxes Barcode processing File-it Assistant TECHNICAL INFORMATION Troubleshooting Supported file types I ND EX OmniPage 18 User’s Guide 65 65 65 66 71 71 73 74 76 78 78 82 83 83 85 86 86 89 90 4
Welcome Welcome to this OmniPage® 18 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 18. 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.
Electronic Help OmniPage 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 HTML help system has been designed for quick and easy information retrieval. 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 18 If you are upgrading from version 17, you benefit from the following innovations. Click the links to for more information. • Start Page: When OmniPage opens it presents clear options to open or scan documents, open OmniPage Project Documents and provides pre-programmed workflows to take your documents from one format to another in one easy step.
• • • • Better control over determining blank pages: A new sensitivity setting increases the accuracy of detecting blank pages that may scan as light gray or colored pages by allowing the threshold for blankness to be adjusted. This improves the use of two controls within OmniPage: the new pre-processing option 'Drop blank pages' and the existing saving option 'Create a new file at each blank page'.
• • • • • • • lets a file set be built up before loading starts. With Quick Convert View it allows not only fast file loading but also 'one-click' total processing: load > recognize > save. See “Input via Easy Loader” on page 30. Expanded ECM support: Links are available to Hummingbird (OpenText) and iManage (Interwoven). When using SharePoint, the server, login and password information must be provided only once per session, and is offered in each subsequent session.
Key features in OmniPage Professional This icon is used throughout the guide to denote features that are available only in OmniPage Professional 18. • Extracting data from filled forms: A 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.
Installation and setup This chapter provides information on installing and starting OmniPage. System requirements The minimum requirements to install and run OmniPage 18 are: • A computer with a 1 GHz Intel® Pentium® processor or higher, or equivalent. Dual-core or Quad-core support recommended. • Microsoft Windows® XPTM 32-bit (SP3) with 400 MHz processor, or Windows® VistaTM 32-bit (SP2) or Windows® VistaTM 64-bit (SP2) or Microsoft Windows® 7TM (32-bit and 64-bit) with a 1 GHz processor.
• • Web access needed for online Activation, Registration, Live Update, Nuance Cloud Connectors, and Scanner Wizard database updating. East Asian language handling must be installed in the operating system to view Japanese, Chinese or Korean documents. (Control Panel / Regional and Language Options). Installing OmniPage OmniPage 18’s installation program takes you through installation with instructions on every screen.
OmniPage Professional is supplied with a complimentary copy of the Nuance PaperPort® document management product. This must be installed separately and has its own system requirements. Setting up your scanner with OmniPage All files needed for scanner setup and support are copied automatically during the program’s installation, but no scanner setup occurs at installation time.
By default OmniPage uses its own scanning interface, located in the Scanner panel of the Options dialog box. If you want to use your scanner’s own interface instead, choose Advanced settings... and select this. Click Hint editor... and choose Edit hints... only if you are experienced in configuring scanners or have been advised by Technical Support to do so. • Click Next to start the tests. For the Basic scan test, insert a test page into your scanner.
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. • Right-click one or more image file icons or file names for a shortcut menu. Select Open With... OmniPage application. The images are loaded into the program. On opening, OmniPage’s title screen is displayed and then a view selection panel.
Activating OmniPage You will be invited to activate the product at the end of installation. Please ensure that web access is available. Provided your serial number is found at its storage location and has been correctly entered, no user interaction is required and no personal information is transmitted. If you do not activate the product at installation time, you will be invited to do this each time you invoke the program. OmniPage 18 can be launched only a limited number of times without activation.
Using OmniPage OmniPage 18 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.
The OmniPage Desktop and Views OmniPage comes with three different views to suit your task. • Classic View - This view has a similar look and feel to previous versions of OmniPage. • Flexible View - This view provides an alternate layout of the OmniPage function panels stacked in a tabbed view to give each panel more space. • Quick Convert View - This view is designed for quick and easy document conversion without having to learn a lot.
Standard Toolbar OmniPage Toolbox Formatting toolbar Thumbnails Image toolbar Document Manager Page Image Status bar 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. Columns present statistical or status information for each page, and (where appropriate) document totals.
Flexible View Use this view to set up the OmniPage workspace so that it fits your task optimally. By default all panels appear. There are five tabs: Page Image (including Thumbnails), Text Editor, Easy Loader, Workflow Status and Help. The Document Manager appears in a horizontal panel at the base of the working area. You can undock, move, minimize, group or close panels as already described. Drag a tab onto the working area to convert it to a Classic-type tiled panel.
Handling large documents (dual-screen) Load the document you want to work on. Move its Thumbnail View to your second monitor and maximize it for a large scale overview of your document and far more space for thumbnail operations. 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.
Quick Convert View Use the Quick Convert View for fast recognition and saving. You can switch to Quick View only when you have no opened document and it can handle only one input file and one output document at a time. The picture shows the default appearance.
The Quick View Page Image panel includes the Quick Convert toolbar, offering the most useful image handling operations. To access advanced functionality, such as image file saving, SET tools, on-the-fly zoning, zone reordering and manual zone drawing for vertical text, a different view should be used. Custom views For a custom view, arrange the panels and toolbars as you wish, then choose Window > Custom Views > Manage. Click Add and name your view.
Form Drawing toolbar: Creates new form elements. Form Arrangement toolbar: Arranges and aligns form elements. All toolbars can be moved and customized in each view to your particular needs, including use of a secondary monitor. The Form toolbars and the Mark Text toolbar (for details see Chapter 4, page 60) appear only in OmniPage Professional 18. Basic Processing Steps There are three ways of handling documents: with automatic, manual or workflow processing.
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. If PaperPort exists on a computer with OmniPage, its OCR services become available and amplify the power of PaperPort. You can choose an OCR program by right-clicking on a text application’s PaperPort link, selecting Preferences and then selecting OmniPage 18 as the OCR package.
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.
The default for manual processing is to have all entered pages automatically selected. This way you can have all new pages recognized by a single mouse click. You can remove this default in the Process panel of the Options dialog box. Combined You can process a document automatically and view results in the Text Editor. If most pages are in order, but a few have not turned out as expected, you can switch to manual processing to adjust settings and re-recognize just those problem pages.
Wizard, you define your job type and name your job; next you are to specify a starting time, a recurring job or watched folder instructions. A job incorporates a workflow with timing instructions added. See “Batch Manager” in Chapter 4, page 78. Processing from other applications You can use the Direct OCR™ feature to call on the recognition services of OmniPage while you work in the following applications: Microsoft Office XP or higher, Corel WordPerfect 12 or X3.
3. Use the OmniPage toolbar button Acquire Text or the same item in the File menu (use the Nuance OCR tab in Office 2007 or 2010) to acquire images from the specified source. 4. If you selected Draw zones automatically in the Direct OCR panel of the Options dialog box, under Acquire Text Settings, recognition proceeds immediately. 5. If Draw zones automatically is not selected, each page image will be presented to you, allowing you to draw zones manually.
Input from the Cloud The Get Pages drop-down list offers direct connections to the following web-based storage sites: Evernote and Dropbox. OmniPage 18 is delivered with a Nuance Cloud Connector component that can be easily configured by choosing it from the Windows Sart menu in the OmniPage group. Specify which further Cloud sites you wish to access, and also which FTP sites you want to use for file input. When taking files from the cloud you may have to provide login information.
Easy Loader is driven from the Process menu. Instead of selecting files to send them straight to OmniPage you can choose Queue Window to get a dialog box with a lock. Turn the lock on to build up and re-order a list of files, maybe coming from different folders. The lock applies to all files collected to enter the currently open document. When the list is ready, turn the lock off to start loading.
Wizard to access basic settings, such as whether or not to view results in the target application. This wizard lets you do immediate conversions or call the Workflow Assistant to access all settings, for instance to change target file names and locations. This shortcut menu item also offers all workflows that have image file input. Input from scanner You must have a functioning, supported scanner correctly installed with OmniPage 18. You have a choice of scanning modes.
Scanning with an ADF The best way to scan multi-page documents is with an Automatic Document Feeder (ADF). Simply load pages in the correct order into the ADF. You can scan double-sided documents with an ADF. A duplex scanner will manage this automatically. Scanning without an ADF Using OmniPage’s scanner interface, you can scan multi-page documents efficiently from a flatbed scanner, even without an ADF.
Describing the layout of the document Before starting recognition you are requested to describe the layout of the incoming pages to assist the auto-zoning process. When you do automatic processing, auto-zoning always runs unless you specify a template that does not contain a process zone or background. When you do manual processing, auto-zoning sometimes runs.
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.
We must distinguish three types of image: Original image: The image created by your scanner or contained in a file before it enters the program. Primary image: The state of the original image after it has been loaded into OmniPage, possibly modified by automatic or manual pre-processing operations. OCR image: A black-and-white image derived from the primary image, optimized for good OCR results.
Image Enhancement Tools The Image Enhancement tools can also be used to edit primary images to save and use them as image files. The following tools are accessible on the toolbar from left to right; their usage is detailed as follows: P - affects Primary image only. O - affects OCR image only. PO - can be applied to either the Primary or OCR image (or both) P+O - a single action is applied to both the Primary and OCR image. P/O - affects both images. WH - applies to whole images only.
The following SET tools allow you to modify image contents: Brightness and Contrast - click this tool to adjust the brightness and contrast of your primary image or a selected part of it. Use the sliders in the tool area to achieve the desired effect. P. AR. Hue / Saturation / Lightness - click this tool then use the sliders to modify the hue, saturation and lightness of your primary image. P. AR.
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). Fill - use this tool to apply a color to the image or a selected part of it. PO. AR. Auto-crop - automatically detects margin areas on the page and reduces this to a minimum. This is a way of unifying the margins on a set of pages with different sized text areas. P+O.
Here the 3D deskew is being applied, with the result on the right.
The Enhance whiteboard photo tool’s slider is being used to improve the contrast of the image. On the left is the starting image; on the right is the result. Some of these tools are also available for automatic pre-processing of all incoming images. These are shown on the Process panel of the Options dialog box.
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. Once you have modified the starting image, the result window displays the changes. Click the Apply button next to the History list to commit the change. Modifications not added to the History by clicking the Apply button will not be actioned. Click the Reset button to discard changes you have performed with a given tool, before they are applied.
Image Enhancement in Workflows To incorporate image enhancement in a workflow choose its icon in the Workflow Assistant. The following options are available: Display images for manual enhancement - during the execution of a workflow, each loaded image will be displayed for manual editing. Apply enhancement template - an already saved enhancement template will be applied automatically to the image while being processed by the workflow.
zoned. Click the Process background tool (shown) to set a process background. Draw ignore zones over parts of the page you do not need. After recognition the page will return with an ignore background and new zones round all elements found on the background. Auto-zoning vertical text If you set Japanese, Korean or Chinese as the recognition language, auto-zoning will find text blocks and detect the text direction.
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. Use it for texts using the Latin, Greek or Cyrillic alphabets and for horizontal texts in the Asian languages. Vertical Asian text zone Use this to draw text zones for vertical text in Japanese or Chinese. Zones should be rectangular.
Working with zones The Image toolbar provides zone editing tools. Grouped tools can be undocked/floated an re-docked 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.
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. Table grids in the image After automatic processing you may see table zones placed on a page. They are denoted with a table zone icon in the top left corner of the zone. To change a rectangular zone to or from a table zone, use its shortcut menu.
the Workflow Assistant, and select the zone template file to use. Then make your choice between displaying images for manual zoning; applying the zone template; or applying it and display the images. Templates accept ignore and process zones and backgrounds. They can therefore be useful to define which parts of the pages to process with auto-zoning, and which parts to ignore.
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. Asian text handling is in some respects different from other languages. See “Asian language recognition” on page 54. The editor display and formatting levels The Text Editor displays recognized texts and can mark words that were suspected during recognition with red, wavy underlines.
True Page True Page® 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. Proofreading OCR results After a page is recognized, the recognition results appear in the Text Editor. Proofreading starts automatically if that was requested in the Proofing panel of the Options dialog box. You can start proofing manually any time. Work as follows: 1.
Verifying text After performing OCR, you can compare any part of the recognized text against the corresponding part of the original image, to verify that the text was recognized correctly. The verifier tool is in the Formatting toolbar. The verifier can also be controlled from the Tools menu. Hover the cursor over a verifier display to obtain the verifier toolbar.
• • Select Train Character under the Tools menu. Click the (...) button beside the Correct field. Select Train Character from the shortcut menu of a suspect or non-dictionary word in the Text Editor. 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 language listing is also provided on the Nuance web site. The option Detect single language automatically removes the need to select languages. It is designed for unattended processing when documents or forms in different languages are expected. OmniPage then examines each incoming page and assigns a single recognition language to the whole page. That means this feature is not suitable for pages containing multiple languages.
in different orientations. The program can handle these; in the output they appear rightrotated. Beside the language list the option Verify language choices invokes automatic language detection that warns of differences between a detected language and the language setting. It works at page-level and identifies four categories: Japanese, Chinese, Korean and non-Asian. It cannot distinguish between Traditional and Simplified Chinese or between non-Asian languages.
- where text is horizontal - will be exported, also to vertical text. Plain Text converters are available (Unicode TXT, Notepad) but here text direction will always be horizontal. Training Training is the process of changing the OCR solutions assigned to character shapes in the image. It is useful for uniformly degraded documents or when an unusual typeface is used throughout a document. OmniPage offers two types of training: manual training and automatic training (IntelliTrain).
Saving training to file, loading, editing and unloading training files are all done in the Training Files dialog box. Unsaved training can be edited in the Edit Training dialog box, an asterisk is displayed in the title bar in place of a training file name. Save it in the Training Files dialog box. 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.
Editing paragraph attributes In all formatting levels except Plain Text, you can change the alignment of selected paragraphs and apply bulleting to paragraphs. 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.
Multicolumn areas have orange borders and enclose one or more boxes. They are autodetected and show which text will be treated as flowing columns when exported with the Flowing Page formatting level. Reading order can be displayed and changed. Click the Show reading order tool in the Formatting toolbar to have the order shown by arrows. Click again to remove the arrows. Click the Change reading order tool for a set of reordering buttons in place of the Formatting toolbar.
Marking and redacting The Mark Text toolbar gives you tools to mark (highlight or strike-out); and to redact text. Use the View menu to have this toolbar displayed. You can float or dock this tool group. Each tool has its equivalent menu item in the Format menu or the Text Editor shortcut menu. Redacting is blacking out confidential information. It is unreadable and unsearchable.
Current sentence Ctrl + Numpad 2 From insertion point to end of sentence Ctrl + Numpad 6 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.
fillable form and save it in the following formats: PDF, RTF, or XSN (Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 format). Static forms can be saved to HTML. OmniPage Professional uses the Logical Form RecognitionTM technology to create fillable forms from static ones. Please note that OmniPage supports form creation and editing, however the tools available here are not designed to fill in forms.
To set the order of overlapping elements, use the “Bring to Front” and “Send to Back” buttons. To align the right/left, top/bottom edges or the centers of the selected form elements: horizontally - use the horizontal alignment tools vertically - use the vertical arrangement tools. The commands of the Form Arrangement toolbar are also accessible from the shortcut menu of any form element.
Set an active PDF form as template. It can be single or multi-page, filled or unfilled. The program determines the location and type of the form fields based on this form template. • Finish the workflow with a saving step. OmniPage will extract data from incoming forms, using the specified template. Export is to a comma-separated value text file (.csv) ready to be loaded into a spreadsheet. Once you select Form Data Extraction in a workflow, only saving steps will follow.
Saving and exporting Once you have acquired at least one image for a document, you can export the image to file. Once you have recognized at least one page, you can export recognition results. After further recognition you can save a single page, selected pages or the whole document 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 and 2010 applications and formats.
1. Choose Save to Files 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. Select to save the selected zone image(s) only, the current page image, selected page images or all images in the document. For multiple zones or multiple pages, you can have all images in a single multi-page image file, providing you set TIFF, MAX, DCX, JB2 or Image-only PDF or XPS as file type.
Selecting a formatting level The formatting level for export is defined at export time, in the saving dialog box (Save to Files, Copy to Clipboard, Send in Mail or other dialog box). Three of the levels correspond to the format views of the same name in the Text Editor. However, the level to be applied for saving is independent of the formatting view displayed in the Text Editor. When exporting to file or mail, first specify a file type. This determines which formatting levels are available.
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 Options... button in a saving dialog box to have precise control over the export. This brings up a dialog box with the name of the converter associated with the current file type. It presents a series of options tailored to this file type. First, confirm or change the formatting level, because this influences which other options are presented.
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. Perform two separate saves or use two workflows.
PDF 1.6 or 1.7 Save to PDF version 1.6 or 1.7 for enhanced security, markup and attachment embedding functionality. PDF/A Choose to create PDF/A compliant files to be confident that files display identically regardless of the computer environment and remain readable even after many years of technological evolution. Tagged PDF Create a tagged PDF file to preserve its structure. This will ensure logical reading order, correct table structure and more.
the image-only parts of the input PDF. All text-based elements in a PDF remain untouched including document metadata, annotations, mark-up, stamps and more. The process can run automatically or with interaction for zoning or proofing. The Assistant loads files you select from your file system and returns the results to the same location; choose whether to have the original files overwritten or retained as backup copies.
account at Amazon; these results are optimized for reader display and appear on the Kindle device registered to that account. To prepare a Kindle workflow: 1. Have your Kindle reader and its associated e-mail address on hand. 2. Choose Kindle Assistant in the Tools menu. 3. Type in a name for the new workflow. 4. Choose a document source: Scan, Load files or Load digital camera files. With file input, you will be prompted to choose input files when the workflow starts running. 5.
Other export targets Turn recognized text into an audio wave file for later listening, using Nuance RealSpeak. A multiple converter is useful for this, allowing you to save the document to file and generate the wave file in one saving step. You must specify the reading language in the converter options for the wave file type. OmniPage 18 is delivered with a Nuance Cloud Connector component that can be easily configured by choosing it from the Windows Start menu in the OmniPage group.
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.
3. Press the Start button. The OmniPage Toolbox displays the steps in the workflow and acts as a progress monitor. The Workflow Status panel shows progress in more detail. To stop the workflow before it completes, press the Stop button. 4. If run-time input selection is specified, the Load Files dialog box awaits your choice of files. 5. If you requested a step requiring interaction (image enhancement, manual zoning, or proofing) the program presents pages for attention. 6.
workflow will resume. 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 drop-down list shows the possible steps at any given workflow position. Use this to add a new step to your workflow.
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. The opening Assistant panel offers two starting points: Choose Fresh Start to begin with no steps in the workflow diagram on the right. Accept or change the default workflow name. Then click Next and choose your first step. Choose an image loading step that can take input from file, scanner or digital camera files.
Workflow to Kindle The Kindle Assistant in the Tools menu helps you create a simple workflow that will accept input, perform OCR and send the results in a suitable format to a Kindle account at Amazon; it will then appear on the Kindle device registered to that account. See “Sending to Kindle” on page 71. Batch Manager The Batch Manager is a separate but integrated program to let you create jobs to be processed immediately, or at some time in the future.
specific type within this category is Barcode cover page jobs, where barcode cover pages are used to identify which workflow to carry out. Normal job: Set starting time and specify or create the Workflow to be run. If you select ‘Do not start now’ use the Activate button in the Batch Manager to start it. Job types available in OmniPage Professional only: Barcode cover page job: This is a special type of folder watching job (see below).
The Options dialog box in the Batch Manager is in the Tools menu. Its General panel has an option Enable OmniPage Agent on system tray at system startup. By default it is on. It must remain selected for jobs to run at their scheduled time. The option is provided so it is possible to prevent all jobs from running without having to disable them individually. Its state also governs the running of barcode cover page jobs.
Click on a job and a step-by-step analysis of all pages in the job appears in the right panel. It shows where input was taken from, the page status and where output was directed to. Click on a plus icon to see more information about the page. Click on a minus icon to hide details. For jobs with the error or warning status, the listing shows which pages failed or what problems occurred. Activate Job in the File menu serves to activate any inactive job immediately.
page information at each stage, allowing you to quickly view any page. Job results are marked by icons. Drop-down lists give you information about processing steps. Watched folders In OmniPage Professional 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.
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. You can specify recurrences, for instance to have the folder(s) watched only during your lunch hour (Start 12.15, End 13.05) every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or overnight in the last three days of each month, when you keep your computer running to collect and process monthly reports arriving from afar.
For scanner input you have to 1. Create a workflow that contains the processing steps you need with Scan Images as first step. 2. Print a barcode page that identifies the workflow. 3. Start barcode processing from the scanner. To scan with a barcode page: 1. Place the barcode cover page on the top of the document in the ADF. 2. Press the Start button on the scanner. 3. Select “Barcode cover page workflow” as Scanner button default action on the Scanner tab of Options.
4. The workflow will be completed at the specified end time of the job, or each time a new barcode cover page is detected. You can copy the barcode cover page image and the image files into the watched barcode folder yourself, or direct others to do this. You 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.
Technical information This chapter provides troubleshooting and other technical information about using OmniPage. Please also read the 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 self-explanatory descriptions of what to do – check connections, close other applications to free up memory, and so on.
Testing OmniPage Restarting Windows in its safe mode allows you to test OmniPage on a simplified system. This is recommended when you cannot resolve crashing problems or if OmniPage has stopped running altogether. See Windows online Help for more information. To test OmniPage in safe mode: 1. Restart your computer in safe mode by pressing F8 immediately after you see the ‘Starting Windows’ message. 2. Launch OmniPage and try performing OCR on an image.
• • • • • • • Check the resolution of the original image. Hover the cursor over a page thumbnail for a popup display. If the resolution is significantly above or below 300 dpi, recognition is likely to suffer. 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. In particular, setting an Asian language for non-Asian texts (and vice versa) is likely to produce unusable results.
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. • Restart Windows XP or Vista in safe mode and test OmniPage by performing OCR on the included sample image files. If you are performing multiple tasks at once, such as recognizing and printing, OCR may take longer.
Index Click a page number to jump to the referenced item.
Converting from PDF 70, 71 Converting image files 75 Copying to Clipboard 65 Cover pages for barcode processing 83 Creating new workflows from existing ones 77 training data 57 workflows 77 Crookedly scanned pages 38 Crop (E) 38 Ctrl to avoid panel redocking 18 Custom Layout 34 Custom views 23 Customizing export converters 68 D Decreasing image resolution 38 Deleting jobs 81 training files 57 user dictionaries 53 Describing document layout 34 Deskew (E) 38 Deskewing digital camera images 38 Desktop 18 Desk
to Kindle 71 to mail 71 to PDF 69 Extracting form data 63 Extracting items from OPDs 17 Extracting text from PDF files 71 F Fast recognition and saving 22 Fax recognition 88 Features, new 7 File-it Assistant 85 Files as export target 65 as image source 29 retained on uninstall 16 separation options 66 types for export 67 Fill (E) 39 Fill text tool (F) 62 Financial dictionaries 54 Finding non-dictionary words 51 suspect words 51 Finishing proofing in a workflow 75 workflows 77 zoning in a workflow 75 Flexib
rotating 38 saving 66 substitutes in PDF 69 Improving accuracy 32, 56, 87 Increasing memory 87 Input from digital camera 30 from image files 29 from PDF files 29, 30 from scanners 32 via Easy Loader 30 Installing OmniPage 12 scanners 13 IntelliTrain 56, 88 Interactive job steps 79 Italic text 57 J Japanese 54 Jobs disabling 80 error messages 80, 81 managing 80, 81 modifying 80 notification of completion 78 page limit 80 recurrent 83 running 80, 81 running without prompts 79 status 80, 81 timing instruction
Non-dictionary words 50 Non-printing characters 50 Notification of job completion 78 Nuance Cloud Connector 30, 73 Numeric zones 44 O OCR Batch Manager 78 checking OCR results 52 Direct OCR 28 poor performance in 88 proofreading results 51 settings for Direct OCR 28 OCR Brightness (E) 38 OCR image 36 OCR/Primary image (E) 37 OmniPage activating 16 assigning to scanner buttons 33 documents in 17 earlier versions 12 installing 12 reinstalling 16 starting 13 testing 87 uninstalling 16 OmniPage Agent 15, 75 Om
with workflows 75 Professional dictionaries 51, 54 Program panels 18 Progress reports from workflows 81 Prohibited zone shapes 47 Proofing in a workflow 75 options 51 Properties of zones 44 Purpose of training 56 Purpose of workflows 74 Q Quality of images 32 Quick Convert View 18, 22 Quick Convert View with Easy Loader 22, 31 R Reading order 59 Reading text aloud with RealSpeak 60 Recognition accuracy 32, 56, 87 languages 53, 88 problems with faxes 88 saving results 66 speeding up 88 Rectangle tool (F) 6
for Direct OCR 28 Options dialog box 24 zone types 47 Settings for workflows 76 Simplified UI 22 Single-column pages with tables 34 Skipping interactive job steps 79 Slow recognition 88 Smart folders 82, 83 Solutions for poor performance 86 Specialized dictionaries 54 Speed zoning 47 Spreadsheet pages 34 Standard toolbar 18 Starting a user dictionary 53 Starting Batch Manager 78 Starting the program 13 Status of jobs 80, 81 Step-by-step processing 18 Steps for workflows 76 Stopping workflows 75 Storing zoni
Classic 18 Custom 23 Flexible 20 Quick Convert 22 resetting 20 using Window menu 20 W Warning messages from jobs 81 Watched folders 82, 83 Watched mailboxes 83 Web access for activation 12 Web display with PDF files 70 Web page links 58 Window menu for view control 20 Windows Explorer 31, 75 Wizard for direct conversions 31, 71 Wizard for scanner setup 13 Word 2007 (DOCX) 89 Word files as input 33 Workflow Assistant 27, 76 Workflow Status 18, 23, 81 Workflow viewer 81 Workflows composition 74 creating 77 f
T HI RD PA R TY L I CEN S ES / NO TI C ES The word verification, spelling and hyphenation portions of this product are based in part on Proximity Linguistic Technology. The Proximity Hyphenation System © Copyright 1988. All Rights Reserved. Franklin Electronic Publishers, Inc. The Proximity/Merriam-Webster American English Linguibases. © Copyright 1982, 1983, 1987, 1988 Merriam-Webster Inc. © Copyright 1982, 1983, 1987, 1988 Franklin Electronic Publishers, Inc.
© Nuance Communications, Inc., 2011. All rights reserved. Subject to change without prior notice.
