Hello Joanne,
If when you open the PDF in the Adobe Reader you hear "alert: empty document" announced then the file is likely an image of a printed page that has been scanned. I found that a small freeware program called "FreeOCR" can usually do quite a good job on this kind of file. If you have Kurzweil, OpenBook, OmniPage or another commercial OCR program then you should be able to run OCR on the file and get the desired results. Here is a link to FreeOCR if you want to download it. After the link are some steps to follow when using the program for a scanned image file. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3951772/freeocr.exe 1. Install FreeOCR by pressing enter key or double-clicking on the downloaded file. 2. Follow prompts to install the software. An icon will be created on the desktop. 3. You might want to restart your system when installation is complete, although the program doesn't tell you that a restart is required. 4. Press enter key or double-click the "FreeOCR" icon on the desktop to start the program. 5. Use Alt+F to bring up the file menu, use down arrow to the "load PDF" choice and press enter key. 6. Browse to the PDF file to be used and open it. 7. Press alt+O to go into the OCR menu and press enter key on the "start OCR process" choice. 8. Use tab key to move into the edit area that tells you that focus is in page 1. 9. After waiting some time for processing to finish use Alt+T to go into the text menu, use down arrow to the "copy text to clipboard" choice and press enter key. 10. Open up your word processing program and paste the text. 11. The top few lines will be text from the FreeOCR program so you can select it and delete it. The main text of the document should start right after the text you are going to delete. 12. An alternative to copying the text to the clipboard is to use the "save text" choice in the text menu of FreeOCR after processing the image file. A dialog box will appear for you to name the file and save it where you want it. You can then open the file in Notepad from where it is stored. I have had success using programs to change the PDF to TIF files and then using the Microsoft Document Writer to extract the text into a document, but this program actually gave me better results and worked faster. If you have the Microsoft Document Image Writer installed you can do the following: 1. Open the PDF file in the Adobe Reader and you will hear "alert: empty document." 2. Press CTRL+P to go into the print dialog box. 3. Use tab key to the list of printers and then use up or down arrow keys to find the "Microsoft Document Image Writer" choice and press enter key. 4. A SaveAs box will appear with .TIF shown in the file types list. Name the file and save it as a TIF file. 5. Open all programs from the start menu, open the Microsoft office group, open the Office tools, and use down arrow to the choice for Microsoft office Document Imaging. Press enter on that choice. 6. Press alt+T to go into the tools menu and press enter key on the "recognize text using OCR" choice. 7. A dialog box will appear where you can tell the program to recognize all pages. Use tab key to the OK button and press enter key. 8. Wait for processing to finish. 9. Press Alt+T again and use down arrow to the "send text to Word" choice and press enter key. 10.Use tab a couple of times and find out what the default location for the document will be and then tab to OK and press enter key. 11.Wait for the file to open in Microsoft Word. Although using the Microsoft Document Image Writer has worked for me, I have had better output using the FreeOCR program. It is also easier to use and you only need to use the one program. Take care. Brian Lee brianl...@charter.net -----Original Message----- From: jaws-users-list-boun...@jaws-users.com [mailto:jaws-users-list-boun...@jaws-users.com] On Behalf Of Betsy Whitney, Dolphin Press Sent: Sunday, May 02, 2010 5:27 AM To: jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com Subject: Re: [JAWS-Users] program and help needed for converting image PDF to OCR file Joanne, There are at least two kinds of PDF formats. If the file is actually a picture of something like a bank statement, what is on the paper is actually a graphic, and it sounds like that's what you have. Some people have had some success with scanning software but generally those programs require a lot of cleanup to the scanned file. I run a transcription business and have had 14 years of experience with such files. We generally ask the sender to provide us a different format of the file such as .doc, .rtf, or even .txt. Some of the software out there now is fairly good, but we have not found it to be reliable enough for many things because of the varied use of fonts and strange symbols. The other kind of pdf is one that was created in some sort of wordprocessor and then made into a pdf. You can tell if the file you have is one of those by going to your File Menu in Acrobat Reader and check to see if there is a Save as Text option. You can then save it as a text file and open it in your preferred wordprocessor. I have had varying degrees of success with copying a pdf to my clipboard and pasting it into Word, but if you have a graphic to start with, that will not help. There are probably others on this list who are much more versed in the technical workings of all of this, and I sure hope they have some suggestions for you that I can use. Betsy At 01:02 AM 5/2/2010, you wrote: >Some of my very important documents have been sent to me from places >like banks and legal places, but they are in picture PDF form. I >did look on the programs page and thought the PDF to OCR would be >perfect, but when extracted it shows a list of 8 things and I have >no idea what any of these items does. There isn't a help file, and >there doesn't seem to be menus for conversion or places where you >can select a PDF file and folder to browse, etc. I don't even see >it in programs in start menu or on desktop. It simply unzips >unrecognizable folders but I don't feel it's completely installed. > >If someone has a solution for this or even another easier program so >Jaws can read these image files, please let me know. > >Thanks. > >Joanne >For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: >http://www.jaws-users.com/help/ For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/ For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
