[Request] Anyone deal with text scanning?

F

fedex

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Veteran XX
My father and I are going through boxes and boxes of old papers for the charitable company he is on the board for. I've been hired by this company to go through the boxes and shred what isn't important anymore and scan in or manually type in the information still needed.

So here is my request:

Any of you work with scanners that retain the text? Or know of software/machines that do this efficiently? What is the cost of these types of machines?

Are there different levels of scanning machines? Like, that if my father then donated it to MEM (the company) afterwards would still be very helpful to them?

Thanks in advance.
 
i use omnipage pro at work, usually with an hp scanjet 5550 (i think, or 5500)

mixed results, depends on the clarity and format of the document. sometimes i have to sit there for a couple hours and play with settings and formats to get it looking good.
 
We use DocuShare by Xerox, we scan in thousands of documents a day and retain them on a big ole server, probably a little too much for what you need, but there are a lot of cheaper solutions out there.
 
Omnipage + a scanner with an ADF (Automatic Document Feeder).

You can scan to PDF to retain the original document, or OCR to just grab the text. I believe Fujitsu makes the industry standard high-capacity ADF scanners. HP also makes a decent flatbed scanner. You do need to go with the higher end units to get the ADF though.
 
Most affordable img to txt software is ass. I'm Chief of Operations at a print shop, and people ask for this some what frequently. Personally, I suggest just scanning them and making them into PDF's. Unless you TRUELY need to be able to edit the text, avoid trying.

Generally you can expect a 90% or so error with most standard software, which means you have to reread the thing and fix all the little goof ups the program makes.

We use Omnipage.
 
Daedalus said:
Most affordable img to txt software is ass. I'm Chief of Operations at a print shop, and people ask for this some what frequently. Personally, I suggest just scanning them and making them into PDF's. Unless you TRUELY need to be able to edit the text, avoid trying.

Generally you can expect a 90% or so error with most standard software, which means you have to reread the thing and fix all the little goof ups the program makes.

We use Omnipage.
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this guy is on crack. i use omnipage pro and had to scan in and convert to spreadsheet 5 years of visa and 5 years of bank statements.

if this guy has a problem, it's because he sucks. scan at 300dpi and no problems. only had to fix maybe 4 or 5 spots on each page and after adding key words into the spellchecker DB maybe 1 or 2 spots.

unless it is all hand written, then yer fux0red. i'd do PDF either way if that's all you need.
 
depends what you are scanning. a typed paper can easily be 100% accurate. a written paper... that's why people have secretaries.
 
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