ScanSoft OMNIPAGE PRO 14 User manual

LEGAL NOTICES
Copyright © 2003 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 Ireland.
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, Direct OCR, RealSpeak and
ASR-1600 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.
THIRD PARTY LICENSES/NOTICES
Please see acknowledgements/notices at the end of this guide.
ScanSoft, Inc.
9 Centennial Drive
Peabody, MA 01960
U.S.A.
ScanSoft Belgium BVBA
Guldensporenpark 32
BE-9820 Merelbeke
Belgium
Part Number 50-281A-10119

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
When to go online 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 14 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
The Text Editor 24
The OmniPage Toolbox 25

iv Contents
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
How to load an OPD 31
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 workflows 43
Processing from other applications 44
How to set up Direct OCR 44
How to use Direct OCR 45
How to use OmniPage Pro with PaperPort 46
Processing with the Batch Manager 47
Defining the source of page images 48
Input from image files 48
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

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide v
Manual zoning 54
Zone types and properties 55
Working with zones 57
Speed zoning 59
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 67
User dictionaries 68
Languages 69
Training 69
Manual training 70
IntelliTrain 70
Training files 71
Text and image editing 73
On-the-fly editing 75
Reading text aloud 76
5SAVING AND EXPORTING 79
Saving OmniPage Documents 80
Export Results button 80
Saving original images 81
Saving recognition results 82
Selecting a formatting level 83
Selecting converter options 85
Using multiple converters 86
Saving to PDF 88
Converting from PDF 89
Copying pages to Clipboard 89
Sending pages by mail 90
Other export targets 92

vi Contents
6WORKFLOWS 93
Workflows 94
Sample workflows 94
Running workflows 96
Workflow Assistant 98
Creating workflows 98
Modifying workflows 101
Batch Manager 101
Creating new jobs 102
Modifying jobs 103
Managing and running jobs 103
Watched folders 104
Barcode driven workflows 106
Voice recognition 107
7TECHNICAL INFORMATION 109
Troubleshooting 110
Solutions to try first 110
Testing OmniPage Pro 111
Increasing memory resources 112
Increasing disk space 112
Text does not get recognized properly 113
Problems with fax recognition 114
System or performance problems during OCR 114
Supported file types 115
File types for opening and saving images 115
File types for saving recognition results 116
Uninstalling the software 118

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide 7
Welcome
Welcome to this OmniPage Pro® text recognition program, and thank
you for choosing our software! The following documentation has been
provided to help you get started and giveyou an overview of the
program.
This User’sGuide
This guide introduces you to using OmniPage Pro 14. Itincludes
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. The guide
is presented in PDF format, allowing you to use hyperlink jumps on
cross-referencesandothernavigation tools in your PDF viewer.
Online Help
OmniPage Pro’s online Help contains information on features, settings,
and procedures. The online Help is provided as HTMLhelp, and has
been designed for quick and easy informationretrieval.Comprehensive
context-sensitive help aims to provide just enough assistance to let you
keep working without delay. See “Getting online Help” on page 9.
ReadmeFile
The Readme file contains last-minute information about the software.
Please read it before using OmniPage Pro.To open this HTML file,
choose Readme in the OmniPage Pro Installer or afterwards in the Help
menu.
Scanning and other information
ScanSoft’s web site at www.scansoft.com provides timely information on
the program. The Scanner Guide contains up-dated information about
supported scanners and related issues; ScanSoft tests the 25 most widely

8Welcome
used scanner models. Access ScanSoft’s web site from the OmniPage Pro
Installer or afterwards from the Help menu.
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 14. 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 14 Office is a version of the product
designed for more intensive use and is tailored to office
environments. Its added features are denoted through
the guide by this symbol. For a concise listing, see “New
features in OmniPage Pro 14” on page 17.

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’s web site at www.scansoft.com contains Tech Notes on
commonly reported issues using OmniPage Pro 14. 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.
When to go online
This guide concentrates on providing background understanding of
program features, suggesting also what they can be useful for. The online
Help provides mainly numbered procedures. Turn to online Help for the
following items or for grater detail on the following topics:
◆Keyboard guide
◆Settings guidelines
◆Manual training
◆Export Converter options
◆Using the Text Editor
◆On-the-fly zoning and editing

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide 11
Chapter 1
Installation and setup
This chapter provides information on installing and starting OmniPage
Pro 14. It presents the following topics:
◆System requirements
◆Installing OmniPage Pro
◆Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro
◆How to start the program
◆Registering your software
◆New features in OmniPage Pro 14

12 Installation and setup
System requirements
The minimum requirements to install and run OmniPage Pro 14 are:
◆A computer with an Intel®Pentium®III processor or equivalent
◆Microsoft®Windows®98 (from second edition), Windows Me,
Windows NT®4.0 (from Service Pack 6), Windows 2000 (from
Service Pack 2), Windows XP or Windows Server 2003
◆Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 with at least Service Pack 2
◆128MB of memory (RAM), 256MB recommended
◆135MB of free hard disk space for application and sample files
plus 40-45MB working space during installation. Additionally:
◆20-67 MB per RealSpeakTM module (343 MB for 9 languages)
◆2 MB per ASR speech recognition language (15MB for 7 languages) *
◆18 MB for ScanSoft PDF Converter *
◆3.4 MB for ScanSoft PDF Printer Driver *
◆5MB for Microsoft Installer (MSI) if not present (it is included
in most Windows operating systems)
◆Up to 5MB for system updates
◆An SVGA monitor with 256 colors, but preferably 16-bit color
(called High Color in Windows 2000 and Medium Color in XP)
and a resolution of at least 800 x 600 pixels
◆A CD-ROM drive for installation
◆A Windows compatible pointing device
◆A compatible scanner with its own scanner driver software, if you
plan to scan documents. See the Scanner Guide at ScanSoft’s web
site (www.scansoft.com) for a list of supported scanners
◆Web access is needed for product registration, Scanner Wizard
database updating and obtaining live updates for the program.
* Supplied with OmniPage Pro 14 Office only.
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 14’s installation program takes you through installation
with instructions on every screen.
Before installing OmniPage Pro:
◆Close all other applications, especially anti-virus programs.
◆Log into your computer with administrator privileges if you are
installing on Windows NT, 2000, XP or Server 2003.
◆If 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.
!To install OmniPage Pro:
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. Accept the End-User
License Agreement and enter the serial number shown on the CD
envelope.
3. Choose a complete or a custom installation. A complete installation
installs all RealSpeakTM Text-to-Speech language modules (currently
9). In OmniPage Pro 14 Office, up to 7 ASR-1600™ Speech
Recognition modules are installed. Custom installation lets you
exclude or add modules. To exclude a module, click its down arrow
and select ‘This feature will be installed when required’.
4. 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 118.
You can use the Control Panel’s Add/Remove Programs facility to add or remove
RealSpeak or ASR modules later. You will need your installation CD for this.

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, but no scanner setup occurs at
installation time. Before using OmniPage Pro 14 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 setup is done through the Scanner Setup Wizard. You can start
this yourself, as described below. Otherwise, it appears when you first
attempt to perform scanning. Proceed as follows:
◆Choose Start!All Programs!ScanSoft OmniPage Pro 14.0!
Scanner Wizard
or click the Setup button in the Scanner panel of the Options
dialog box.
or choose Scan in the Get Page drop-down list in the OmniPage
Toolbox and click the Get Page button.
◆The Scanner Setup Wizard starts. If you have a web connection,
the first panel invites you to update the scanner database supplied
with the wizard. Choose Yes or No and click on Next.
◆Choose ‘Select and test scanner or digital camera’, then click
Next. If you have a single installed scanner, it appears, along with
any scanners previously set up with OmniPage Pro. If the
required scanner is not listed, click Add Scanner... .
◆You see a list of all detected scanner drivers in the checkmarked
categories. This can include network devices. Select one and click
OK. To install a second device, you must run the Scanner Wizard
again.
◆The wizard reports whether the chosen scanner model already
has settings in the scanner database. If it does, you do not need to
test it. If it does not, you should test it. Click on Next.
◆If you chose not to test, click Finish. If you chose testing, click
Next to have the scanner connection tested. If the connection is
in order, you see a menu of further tests. Choose which testing
steps you want to run. The Basic test scan is recommended.

Chapter 1
Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro 15
◆By default OmniPage Pro 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. Choose Modify 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. The wizard will scan using your scanner
manufacturer’s software. Click on Next. Your scanner’s native
user-interface will appear.
◆Click on Scan to begin the sample scan.
◆If necessary, click on Missing Image… or Improper
Orientation... and make the appropriate selections.
◆Once the image appears correctly in the window, click on Next.
◆Move through the remaining requested tests, following the
instructions on the screen.
◆When all the requested tests have been completed successfully,
the Scanner Wizard reports and invites you to click on Finish.
◆You have successfully configured your scanner to work with
OmniPage Pro 14!
To change the scanner settings at a later time, or to setup or remove a
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 wizard
and select ‘Test the current scanner or digital camera’ in the second panel,
then work through the procedure described above, maybe using advice
received from Technical Support.
To specify a different default scanner, open the wizard to reach the list of
setup scanners. Move the highlight to the desired scanner and be sure to
close the wizard with Finish.
To get updated settings for your current scanner, open the wizard, request
a fresh database download in the first screen, then choose ‘Use current
settings with current device’, click Next and then Finish.

16 Installation and setup
How to start the program
To start OmniPage Pro 14 do one of the following:
◆Click Start in the Windows taskbar and choose All Programs!
ScanSoft OmniPage Pro 14.0!OmniPage Pro 14.0.
◆Double-click the OmniPage Pro 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” on page 29.
◆Right click one or more image file icons or file names for a
shortcut menu. Select Open With... OmniPage Pro application.
The images are loaded into the program.
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:
◆Use the Batch Manager program. Click Start in the Windows
taskbar and choose All Programs!ScanSoft OmniPage Pro
14.0! OmniPage Batch Manager. See page 47.
◆Click Acquire Text from the File menu of an application
registered with the Direct OCR™ facility. See “How to set up
Direct OCR” on page 44.
◆Right-click on one or more image file icons or file names for a
shortcut menu. Select OmniPage Pro 14 and choose a target
format or a workflow from its sub-menu. The files will be
processed according to the workflow instructions. See page 96.
◆Click the OmniPage icon on the taskbar. Choose a workflow to
start the program and run the workflow. In OmniPage Pro 14
Office, voice selection of workflow is possible.
◆Use OmniPage Pro 14 with ScanSoft’s PaperPort®or Pagis®
document management products, to add OCR services. See
“How to use OmniPage Pro with PaperPort” on page 46.

Chapter 1
Registering your software 17
Registering your software
ScanSoft’sonlineregistrationrunsatthe end of installation. Please ensure
web access is available. Weprovide an easy electronic form that can be
completed in less than five minutes. When the form is filled, click
Submit. If you did not register the softwareduring installation, you will
be periodically invited to register later. You can go to www.scansoft.com
to register online. Click on Support and from the main support screen
choose Register in 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 14
The OmniPage
®
product family is augmented by OmniPage Pro 14. 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 12.
Features unique to OmniPage Pro 14 Office have the Office icon:
Feature Description See
Higher accuracy A new recognition and parsing engine, four years in development, delivers
even better OCR accuracy. page 31
Improved layout retention This engine also delivers superior page layout retention with True Page and
Flowing Page formatting levels. Text flows better round irregular pictures. page 83
Workflows and instant access Save workflows to perform recurring tasks without having to take care of indi-
vidual settings each time. Run workflows instantly from your taskbar. page 93
Drag-and-drop recognition Select a zone and drag it into the working area of a target application. Graphics
are pasted as image, text is recognized and pasted. page 89
Adjustable recognition speed Recognition performance can be optimized for greater speed or greater accu-
racy. On good quality documents even faster processing gives good results. page 31
Speed zoning Do manual zoning quickly. See auto-detected zones and double-click on any of
them to turn them into real zones. page 59
Financial dictionary An English financial dictionary is added to the existing legal and medical pro-
fessional dictionaries, available for several languages. page 31
Character validation Validate individual accented letters for recognition, in addition to those enabled
by the language choice. page 31
Bullets and numbering Bulleted and numbered paragraphs can be detected. Bullets and numbering
can be inserted, removed and edited in the Text Editor. page 73
More portable OPDs Save to OmniPage Document (Extended) to have training files, user dictionar-
ies or zone templates embedded in the OPD. page 29

18 Installation and setup
A more complete list of features and differences appears in online Help.
Feature Description See Office
Colored backgrounds Get better recognition of text printed on color or shaded back-
grounds. There is also improved noise removal. page 49
Resolution control Choose the resolution for saved page images and for images
embedded in recognized pages. page 85
Improved proofing system The two parts of words hyphenated at line ends are now joined.
The image viewer and the verifier display both image parts. page 65
Concurrent saving Create multiple converters to save to more than one file type in
one step: for example save page images and recognized pages. page 86
Audio book publishing Save recognized texts as WAV audio files. Transfer these to CD to
have scanned documents read aloud anytime - even on the move. page 116
Voice read-back ScanSoft RealSpeak as the Text-to-Speech solution provides bet-
ter quality voices in more languages for having text read aloud. page 76
Batch Manager Redesign of the previous Schedule OCR facility gives more control
and better overview for unattended processing of pre-defined jobs. page 101
Smart Folders
Jobs can take input from watched folders, with better handling of
multiple folders. Background processing runs whenever image
files are sent to these folders. Recurring jobs are supported.
page 104
Barcode cover pages
Start a workflow by placing a barcode cover page in a scanner on
top of your document. Cover page image files can start image file
workflows.
page 106
Greater PDF support
Generate tagged, signed and encrypted Portable Document Files.
Allow reading of tags when PDF files are opened to improve layout
retention.
page 88
Open PDF files in MS Word ScanSoft enables PDF files to be converted to Word documents
when working in Microsoft Word, without using OmniPage Pro. page 89
Export to Office 2003
Support for Microsoft Word 2003 (Word ML). In OmniPage Pro 14
Office support is added for Microsoft Reader (.LIT) and maintained
for the XML and eBook file types.
page 116
Voice control
Start workflows and control proofing corrections by voice com-
mands in a number of languages, using the included ScanSoft
ASR-1600 voice recognition modules.
page 107
SharePoint, DMS and FTP
Take image files from Microsoft SharePoint, any ODMA-compliant
Document Management System (DMS) or an FTP site and export
files to these locations for storage or group use.
page 92
Print to PDF functionality
Create searchable, editable PDF files from text files, such as Word
documents. OmniPage Pro installs a PDF printer driver that
becomes available in all your print-capable applications.
page 88

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 14 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:
◆What is optical character recognition
• Documents in OmniPage Pro
• Basic processing steps
◆The OmniPage Desktop
◆Managing documents
◆OmniPage Documents
◆Settings

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 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.