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#1
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Scanning documents
II would like to be able to scan forms into Excel or Word and then fill in
the forms for different people.Im trying to get away from the typewriter. Thanks for any help |
#2
Posted to microsoft.public.word.newusers
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Scanning documents
A scanner captures a picture of the page. Although you can embed that
picture in Word, you won't be able to type in it. That gap is filled by software called Optical Character Recognition, or OCR. This software looks at the image in the picture and tries to "read" it character by character. The result is placed in a Word document. Some programs are better at this than others. Most scanners include a simple OCR program in their software bundle, more as an advertisement for their separately priced (usually expensive) software than as something that's really useful. The big names in OCR software are Abbyy FineReader (www.abbyy.com) and Nuance (formerly ScanSoft) OmniPage (www.nuance.com). Recent versions of MS Office include the Microsoft Office Document Imaging program. Most OCR programs are not well adapted for dealing with forms -- the lines and boxes get in the way of interpreting the text. Nuance sells OmniForm, which is supposed to be better tuned for this. Unless you have an office where you scan dozens or hundreds of forms every day, though, it's likely to be too expensive. When you take into account the effort needed to scan, recognize, correct, fill in, and save most forms, it's usually more effective to reconstruct the form from scratch instead. -- Regards, Jay Freedman Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org On Fri, 29 Dec 2006 16:36:00 -0800, Bob wrote: II would like to be able to scan forms into Excel or Word and then fill in the forms for different people.Im trying to get away from the typewriter. Thanks for any help |
#3
Posted to microsoft.public.word.newusers
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Scanning documents
It's going to take time and a lot of work. Is it worth your time and effort?
If so, there are some great sites that can help. But it'll take hours of work per form. -- JoAnn Paules MVP Microsoft [Publisher] ~~~~~ How to ask a question http://support.microsoft.com/KB/555375 "Bob" wrote in message ... II would like to be able to scan forms into Excel or Word and then fill in the forms for different people.Im trying to get away from the typewriter. Thanks for any help |
#4
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Scanning documents
I had this issue to deal with once and found that working backward produced
the most economic solution. As it turned out, the company that supplied the "form" had created it with Excel and was just as willing to e-mail the form to me with its original .xls extension as the previous .pdf rendering! Viola-- no fancy character reading necessary. Worth a try. -- Y "Bob" wrote: II would like to be able to scan forms into Excel or Word and then fill in the forms for different people.Im trying to get away from the typewriter. Thanks for any help |
#5
Posted to microsoft.public.word.newusers
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Scanning documents
"Bob" wrote in message
... II would like to be able to scan forms into Excel or Word and then fill in the forms for different people.Im trying to get away from the typewriter. Thanks for any help If you don't have an OCR program, a very "cludgy" work around is to place text boxes where you want to fill in information on the picture of the form that you are using. |
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