ScanSoft OmniPage PRO 12 User manual

LEGAL NOTICES
Copyright © 2002 ScanSoft, 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
ScanSoft, Inc., 9 Centennial Drive, Peabody, Massachusetts 01960. Printed in the United
States of America and in the Netherlands.
The software described in this book is furnished under license and may be used or copied only
in accordance with the terms of such license.
IMPORTANT NOTICE
ScanSoft, Inc. provides this publication "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or
implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a
particular purpose. Some states or jurisdictions do not allow disclaimer of express or implied
warranties in certain transactions; therefore, this statement may not apply to you. ScanSoft
reserves the right to revise this publication and to make changes from time to time in the
content hereof without obligation of ScanSoft to notify any person of such revision or
changes.
TRADEMARKS AND CREDITS
ScanSoft, OmniPage, OmniPage Pro, PaperPort, Pagis, True Page and Direct OCR are registered
trademarks or trademarks of ScanSoft, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries.
All other company names or product names referenced herein may be the trademarks of their
respective holders.
ScanSoft, Inc.
9 Centennial Drive
Peabody, MA 01960
U.S.A.
ScanSoft Belgium BVBA
Guldensporenpark 32
BE-9820 Merelbeke
Belgium
Part Number 50-281201-00A

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide iii
CONTENTS
WELCOME 7
Using this Guide 8
Getting online Help 9
Online HTML Help 9
Context-Sensitive Help 9
Tech Notes 10
Glossary 10
1INSTALLATION AND SETUP 11
System requirements 12
Installing OmniPage Pro 13
Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro 14
How to start the program 16
Registering your software 17
New features in OmniPage Pro 12 17
2INTRODUCTION 19
What is optical character recognition 20
OmniPage Pro’s OCR capabilities 20
Documents in OmniPage Pro 21
Basic processing steps 21
The OmniPage Desktop 22
The Menu bar 23
The Toolbars 23
The Image Panel 24

iv Contents
The Text Editor 24
The OmniPage Toolbox 25
Managing documents 26
Thumbnails 26
Document Manager 27
Customizing Document Manager columns 28
Deleting pages from a document 28
Printing a document 29
Closing a document 29
OmniPage Documents 29
Why save to OPD 30
How to save to OPD 30
Settings 31
3PROCESSING DOCUMENTS 33
Quick Start Guide 34
Loading and recognizing sample image files 34
Scanning and recognizing a single page 34
Processing overview 36
Automatic processing 38
Stopping and restarting automatic processing 39
Manual processing 40
Combined processing 41
Processing with the OCR Wizard 43
Processing from other applications 45
How to set up Direct OCR 45
How to use Direct OCR 45
How to use OmniPage Pro with PaperPort 46
Processing with Schedule OCR 47
Defining the source of page images 48
Input from image files 48

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide v
Input from scanner 49
Scanning with an ADF 50
Scanning without an ADF 51
Describing the layout of the document 51
Zones and backgrounds 53
Automatic zoning 53
Manual zoning 54
Zone types and properties 55
Working with zones 57
Table grids in the image 59
Using zone templates 61
4PROOFING AND EDITING 63
The editor display and views 64
Proofreading OCR results 65
Verifying text 66
User dictionaries 68
Training 69
Manual training 69
IntelliTrain 70
Training files 71
Text and image editing 72
On-the-fly editing 74
Reading text aloud 75

vi Contents
5SAVING AND EXPORTING 77
Saving original images 78
Saving recognition results 79
Saving a document as you work 80
Selecting a formatting level 81
Selecting advanced saving options 82
Saving to PDF 84
Copying pages to Clipboard 84
Sending pages by mail 85
6TECHNICAL INFORMATION 87
Troubleshooting 88
Solutions to try first 88
Testing OmniPage Pro 89
Increasing memory resources 90
Increasing disk space 90
Text does not get recognized properly 91
Problems with fax recognition 92
System or performance problems during OCR 92
ODMA support 93
Advanced features in Schedule OCR 93
Supported file types 94
File types for opening and saving images 94
File types for saving recognition results 95
Uninstalling the software 96
INDEX 97

OmniPage ProUser’s Guide 7
Welcome
Welcome to OmniPage Pro®, and thank you for using our software! The
following documentationhas been provided to help youget started and
give you anoverview of the program.
ThisUser’sGuide
This guide introduces you to using OmniPage Pro 12. Itincludes
installationand setup instructions, a description ofthe program’s
commands and workingareas, task-oriented instructions, ways to
customize and control processing, and technicalinformation. The guide
is presentedin PDF format, allowing youto usehyperlink jumpson
cross-referencesandother navigation toolsinyourPDFviewer.
Online Help
OmniPage Pro’s online Help containsinformation onfeatures, settings,
and procedures. The online Help is provided as HTML help, andhas
been designed for quick and easy information retrieval. Comprehensive
context-sensitive help aims to provide just enough assistance to letyou
keep working without delay.See“Getting online Help” onpage 9.
ReadmeFile
TheReadmefile containslast-minute information about the software.
Please readit beforeusingOmniPage Pro. Toopen this HTMLfile,
chooseReadme in the OmniPage Pro Installer or afterwards inthe Help
menu.
Scanning and other information
ScanSoft’sweb site at www.scansoft.com providestimelyinformation on
the program. The Scanner Guide contains up-dated information about
supported scanners and related issues; ScanSoft tests the 25 most widely
used scanner models. Access ScanSoft’s web site from the OmniPage Pro
Installer or afterwards from the Help menu.

8Welcome
Using this Guide
This guide is written with the assumption that you know how to work in
the Microsoft Windows environment. Please refer to your Windows
documentation if you have questions about how to use dialog boxes,
menu commands, scroll bars, drag and drop functionality, shortcut
menus, and so on.
We also assume you are familiar with your scanner and its supporting
software, and that the scanner is installed and working correctly before it
is setup with OmniPage Pro 12. Please refer to the scanner’s own
documentation as necessary.
The following conventions are used in this guide:
Bold Introduces new terms and presents sub-headings.
Italic Names topics in the online Help system.
Presents longer option texts in dialog boxes.
Non-serif Presents file names: sample.tif
A note presents an item of additional information.
A tip presents ideas for using program features to
accomplish specific tasks.

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide 9
Getting online Help
In addition to using this guide, you can use OmniPage Pro’s online Help
to learn about features, settings, and procedures. Online Help is available
after you install OmniPage Pro.
Online HTML Help
Open OmniPage Pro’s online Help at its top level by choosing Help
Topics at the top of the Help menu. This allows you to see topics
arranged in a Table of Contents, search an alphabetical list of keywords or
make full-text searches through the topics. Other items in the Help menu
provide access to useful topics or web pages.
Press F1 as you are working with the program to see an online help topic
relating to the current screen area, dialog box or warning message.
Context-Sensitive Help
You can get concise on-the-spot information in a popup window about a
particular OmniPage Pro menu item, toolbar button, screen area or
dialog box, in the following ways:
Click the Help tool in the Standard toolbar to get the help icon. Click
this on any item on the desktop outside a dialog box or warning message.
Press Shift + F1 to get the same help icon. Use Shift + F1 to get context-
sensitive help for shortcut menu items.
Click the question mark button in the upper right corner of a dialog box
and then click an item in the dialog box to see the popup window.
Some dialog boxes or warning messages have their own Help button, or a
help text. Click the button or the text to get information on the dialog or
message box.
Click anywhere to remove a context-sensitive popup Help window.

10 Welcome
TechNotes
ScanSoft’sweb site at www.scansoft.comcontainsTechNotes on
commonly reported issues using OmniPage Pro 12. Web pages may also
offer assistance on the installation process and troubleshooting.
Glossary
This guide does not include a glossary. The online Help has a
comprehensive glossary, with its own alphabetical index and a table of
contents. Please consult it if you want to find the meaning of a term used
in this guide or in the program.

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide 11
Chapter 1
Installation and setup
This chapter provides information on installing and starting OmniPage
Pro 12. It presents the following topics:
XSystem requirements
XInstalling OmniPage Pro
XSetting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro
XHow to start the program
XRegistering your software
XNew features in OmniPage Pro 12

12 Installation and setup
System requirements
You need the following minimum systemrequirements toinstall and run
OmniPage Pro 12:
XA computer witha Pentiumor higher processor
XMicrosoftWindows 98 (from second edition), Windows Me,
Windows NT 4.0 (withatleast Service Pack6), Windows 2000
or WindowsXP
X64MB of memory (RAM),128MB recommended
X90MB of free harddisk space for the application files plus 5MB
working spaceduringinstallation
X5MBforMicrosoft Installer(MSI)if not present (This ispresent
as part of the operating system in WindowsMe,Windows2000
and Windows XP)
XSVGA monitor with256 colors, but preferably 16-bit color
(called High Color in Windows 2000 andMedium Color in XP)
and 800 x 600 pixel resolution
XWindows-compatible pointing device
XCD-ROMdrive forinstallation
XAcompatible scanner with its own scanner driver software,if you
plan toscan documents. Please see the Scanner Guide at
ScanSoft’sweb site (www.scansoft.com)for a listof supported
scanners.
Performance and speed will be enhanced if your computer’s processor, memory,
and available disk space exceed minimum requirements.

Chapter 1
Installing OmniPage Pro 13
Installing OmniPage Pro
OmniPage Pro 12’s installation program takes you through installation
with instructions on every screen.
Before installing OmniPage Pro:
XClose all other applications, especially anti-virus programs.
XLog into your computer with administrator privileges if you are
installing on Windows NT, 2000 or XP.
XIf you own a previous version of OmniPage Pro, or if you are
upgrading from demonstration software or an OmniPage Special
Edition, the installer asks your consent to uninstall that product.
WTo i n s t a l l O m n i Pa g e Pr o :
1. Insert OmniPage Pro’s 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. This language will be
used for the Text-to-Speech system and as the program’s interface
language. The program interface language is used for displays such as
menu items, dialog boxes, warning messages and so on. You can
change the interface language later from within OmniPage Pro 12,
but your choice at installation time determines which Text-to-Speech
system will be installed with the program. See the second note below.
3. Follow the instructions on each screen to install the software. All files
needed for scanning are copied automatically during installation.
Sometimes uninstalling and then reinstalling OmniPage Pro will solve a problem.
See “Uninstalling the software” on page 96.
It is planned to provide Text-to-Speech for English, French, German, Italian,
Portuguese and Spanish. This may vary depending on region or version. The
Readme file provides latest information. A speech system for only one language can
be installed with OmniPage Pro. See “Reading text aloud” on page 75.

14 Installation and setup
Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro
All files needed for scanner setup and support are copied automatically
during the program’s installation. Before using OmniPage Pro 12 for
scanning, your scanner should be installed with its own scanner driver
software and tested for correct functionality. Scanner driver software is
not included with OmniPage Pro.
Scanner installation and setup are done through the Scanner Wizard. You
can start this yourself, as described below. Otherwise, the Scanner Wizard
appears when you first attempt to perform scanning.
Please follow these steps to use the Scanner Wizard to setup your scanner
with OmniPage Pro 12:
XChoose StartProgramsScanSoft OmniPage Pro 12.0
Scanner Wizard
or click the Setup button in the Scanner panel of the Options
dialog box.
or choose a scan setting in the Get Page drop-down list in the
OmniPage Toolbox and click the Get Page button.
The Scanner Setup Wizard starts. The first panel appears only on
first setup when called from inside OmniPage Pro.
XChoose ‘Select scanner or digital camera’, then click Next. You
see a list of all detected TWAIN scanner drivers, with the system
default scanner selected.
XClick once to select the driver of the scanner you want to use.
Click ‘Other drivers...’ if you need to browse for a driver. Select
‘Configure Advanced Settings’ for an extra panel if you want your
scanner’s own interface to be hidden during scanning or to
modify the image transfer method. Click on Next.
XChoose Yes to test your scanner configuration, then click Next.
The wizard will now test the connection from the computer to
your scanner. When completed, click on Next.
XInsert a test page into your scanner. The wizard is now prepared
to do a basic scan using your scanner manufacturer’s software.
Click on Next. Your scanner’s native user-interface will appear.

Chapter 1
Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro 15
XClick on Scan to begin the sample scan.
XIf necessary, click on Inverse Image… or Missing Image… and
make the appropriate selections.
XOnce the image appears correctly in the window, click on Next.
XSelect the item that most appropriately describes your scanner,
then click on Next.
XClick on Next to proceed to page size.
XThe page sizes that the Scanner Wizard believes your scanner to
support are listed in the window. To make any changes to the
page sizes, click on Advanced, make the changes and then click
on Next.
XInsert a page with text but no pictures into your scanner. Click
on Next to begin a scan in black-and-white mode.
XIf necessary, click on Inverse Image… or Missing Image… and
make the appropriate selections.
XOnce the image appears correctly in the window, click on Next.
XIf you have a color scanner, insert a color photograph or a page
with a color picture into your scanner. Click on Next to begin a
scan in color mode. If necessary, click on Inverse Image… or
Missing Image… and make the appropriate selections. Once the
image appears correctly in the window, click on Next. If your
scanner cannot scan in color, skip this step.
XInsert a photograph or a page containing a picture into your
scanner. Click on Next to begin a scan in grayscale mode. If
necessary, click on Inverse Image… or Missing Image… and
make the appropriate selections. Once the image appears
correctly in the window, click on Next.
XYou have successfully configured your scanner to work with
OmniPage Pro 12! Click on Finish.
To change the scanner settings at a later time, or to set up a different
scanner, reopen the Scanner Setup Wizard from the Windows Start menu
or from the Scanner panel of the Options dialog box. To test and repair
an improperly functioning scanner, open the Scanner Setup Wizard from
the Windows Start menu and select ‘Test scanner or digital camera’ in the
first panel, then work through the procedure described above.

16 Installation and setup
How to start the program
To start OmniPage Pro 12 do one of the following:
XClick Start in the Windows taskbar and choose Programs
ScanSoft OmniPage Pro 12.0OmniPage Pro 12.0.
XDouble-click the OmniPage Pro icon in the program’s
installation folder or on the Windows desktop if you placed it
there.
XDouble-click an OmniPage Document (OPD) icon or file name;
the clicked document is loaded into the program. See
“OmniPage Documents” on page 29.
On opening, OmniPage Pro’s title screen is displayed and then its
desktop. See “The OmniPage Desktop” on page 22. It provides an
introduction to the program’s main working areas.
There are several ways of running the program with a limited interface:
XUse the Schedule OCR program. Click Start in the Windows
taskbar and choose ProgramsScanSoft OmniPage Pro 12.0
Schedule OCR. See “Processing with Schedule OCR” on
page 47.
XClick Acquire Text from the File menu of an application
registered with the Direct OCR™ facility. See “How to set up
Direct OCR” on page 45.
XRight-click an image file icon or file name for a shortcut menu.
Select a sub-menu item from ‘Convert To...’ to define a target.
XUse OmniPage Pro 12 with ScanSoft’s PaperPort®or Pagis®
document management products, to add OCR services. See
“How to use OmniPage Pro with PaperPort” on page 46.

Chapter1
Registering your software 17
Registering your software
ScanSoft’sregistrationWizard runsattheendofinstallation.Weprovide
an easy electronic formthatcanbecompletedin less than fiveminutes.
When the form is filled, and you click Send theprogram will search an
Internet connectionto immediately perform the registration online.
If you did not register the software duringinstallation, you will be
periodicallyinvitedto registerlater.Youcango to www.scansoft.comto
register online. Click on Support and from the main support screen
choose Register on the left-hand column.
For a statement on the use of your registration data, please see ScanSoft’s
Privacy Policy.
New features in OmniPage Pro 12
The OmniPage
®
product family is augmented by OmniPage Pro 12. If
you are upgrading, you may not need to consult this guide very much.
Here are some main areas of innovation compared to OmniPage Pro 11:
XDramatic increase in accuracy
Improved synergy between recognition engines, support for
professional dictionaries and the ability to train characters chosen
by the user boost accuracy to new levels.
XStreamlined interface
Automatic and manual processing are now driven directly from
the OmniPage Toolbox without separate toolbars. See page 25.
Thumbnails now display in the Image Panel; choose to see the
current page, thumbnails or both. See page 26. The previous
Detail view becomes the Document Manager and includes a
Note column for comments and searchable keywords.
XNew zoning concepts
On-the-fly zoning allows zone changes to be processed
immediately without having to re-recognize the whole page. See
page 74. Page backgrounds are defined as process (auto-zone) or
ignore, so all zoning instructions appear on the page and can be

18 Installation and setup
saved to zone templates. See page 53. Irregular zones can be
drawn and zones split and joined more simply, without the need
for separate tools. See page 57.
XBetter proofing and verifying
The Proofing dialog box now shows suspect words in a wider
context. A dynamic verifier can stay open as text is being
checked, with the image display and window tracking the editing
position. See page 65.
XFormatting levels for display and saving
There are three formatting levels for Text Editor display. See
page 64. The output formatting level is now chosen at export
time; the choices depend on the specified file type. An export
choice ‘Flowing Page’ is an improved version of the previous
‘Retain Flowing Columns’ view. It preserves page layout without
boxes and frames whenever possible, so text can flow between
columns. See page 81.
XSuperior page analysis
The transfer of table formatting has improved, in particular the
detection of tables without gridlines in original pages. Web and
e-mail addresses can be detected and transferred to the Text
Editor; hyperlinks can be inserted. Reading order can now be
viewed and changed after recognition in the Text Editor’s True
Page®view. See from page 72.
XImproved PDF handling
OmniPage Pro 12 searches background text in PDFs it opens, to
deliver higher recognition accuracy. A new file type ‘PDF Edited’
allows good format retention on pages that were modified in the
Text Editor after recognition.
XAdvanced saving options
A wider range of saving options is offered for each output file
type. User-defined output file types can be created with
customized settings. See page 82. If your edition of OmniPage
Pro 12 includes the new saving formats XML and eBook, see
page 95.

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide 19
Chapter 2
Introduction
You probably use your computer for business correspondence, preparing
reports, handling data and an ever-increasing number of other uses. The
challenge is that, in spite of the digital revolution, certain sources of
information still circulate in printed, paper form and cannot be used
immediately in a computer.
For example, if you want to incorporate information from a magazine
article in a report you are preparing, you somehow have to get the text
from the article into your computer. Painstakingly retyping the article is
not an appealing solution.
This chapter introduces you to the solution: optical character recognition
(OCR). It describes how OmniPage Pro 12 uses OCR technology to
transform text from scanned pages or image files into editable text for use
in your favorite computer applications.
We present the following topics:
XWhat is optical character recognition
• Documents in OmniPage Pro
• Basic processing steps
XThe OmniPage Desktop
XManaging documents
XOmniPage Documents
XSettings

20 Introduction
What is optical character recognition
Optical character recognition is the process of extracting text from an
image. This image can result from scanning a paper document or
opening an electronic image file. Images do not have editable text
characters; they have many tiny dots (pixels) that together form character
shapes. These present a picture of the text on a page.
During OCR, OmniPage Pro 12 analyzes the character shapes in an
image and defines solutions to produce editable text. After OCR, you can
save the resulting text to a variety of word-processing, desktop publishing
or spreadsheet applications.
OmniPage Pro’s OCR capabilities
In addition to text recognition, OmniPage Pro can retain the following
elements of a document through the OCR process.
Graphics
Photos, logos, and drawings are examples of graphics.
Text formatting
Font types, sizes and styles (such as bold, italic and underlines) are
examples of character formatting. Indents, tabs, margins and line spacing
are examples of paragraph formatting.
Page formatting
Column structure, table formats, and placement of graphics and headings
are examples of page formatting.
The graphics, text and page formatting elements that OmniPage Pro
retains are determined by the settings you select. Refer to the Settings
Guidelines in the online Help for more information about selecting
settings.
OmniPage Pro only recognizes machine-generated characters such as offset or
laser-printed or typewritten text. However, it can retain handwritten text, such as a
signature, as a graphic.