Direct OCR Questions & Answers

Listed below are some common questions and answers about Direct OCR. See Direct OCR Settings for information on how to activate and use this feature.

Q

Do I have to run OmniPage Pro in order to scan or load and recognize a document?

A

No. If OmniPage Pro is installed on your computer, you can use the Direct OCR feature to scan and process documents from within your word processing or spreadsheet program without opening OmniPage Pro.

Q

How do I know if Direct OCR is working?

A

Choose Options Direct OCR... in the Tools menu of OmniPage Pro. Make sure Enable Direct OCR is selected and that the application you want to use is listed in the Registered box. Click OK and close OmniPage Pro. Open the registered application and choose Acquire Text... in the File menu to load or scan an image.

Q

Can I use my scanner's ADF with Direct OCR?

A

No. OmniPage Pro does not support automatic document feeders with Direct OCR. The feature was designed to scan in a single page at a time. For multiple-page documents you need to choose Acquire Text... from the File menu for each page.

Q

Do the selections I make under Acquire Text Settings... affect the settings in the OmniPage Pro Options dialog box?

A

Yes. Regardless of whether you make a choice in the Options dialog box or in Acquire Text Settings..., you are changing the same settings.

Q

Are there programs that do not work with Direct OCR?

A

As long as the program has a File menu, Direct OCR should work fine. A few programs, such as Microsoft Works, do not run well if Direct OCR is enabled, so simply disable it. Other programs, such as Microsoft Publisher, run fine with Direct OCR enabled, but the Acquire Text functions simply do not work.

NOTE: If you have a program that does not work with Direct OCR, it is important to know that you are not loosing any functionality. Direct OCR is a feature that makes scanning single pages more convenient because you do not need to switch between OmniPage Pro and other programs. You will get the same high-quality OCR results even if you cannot use this feature.