Omnipage
Pre-process
Open Omnipage
If you want to load a scan that is of two pages (an open book), but have those pages split so that only one page shows at a time, go to Tools->Options->Process->Look for facing pages and make sure that Look for facing pages is checked. While this option is very helpful for dealing with skewed pages, the process doesn’t always do a good job of identifying facing pages and can cut off parts of the book. If you don’t want this to happen, close the document without saving, uncheck this box, and reload the pdf.
Step 1
Click “Load Files”
• Omnipage is designed to run in a 1->2->3 process. Load Files is Step 1.
Check your settings (Tools ->Options)
• Your layout description should be Custom
• Language settings can make a huge difference. Make sure you have the right language selected for your document, since it will automatically be set to whatever language you last used. This can cause problems if you are switching between languages but don’t remember to change this setting.
• Image settings? (Tools->options->custom layout. Setting it as No Graphics and One Column seems to work)
Select “Draw Text Zone” (the t on the sidebar)
• Draw zones around the areas you want to recognize.
• Double clicking will often draw it for you, but be careful, since it doesn’t always get it right.
• Use the X on the tool bar (draw ignore zone) to block out images or help you refine your text box. Sometimes it’s easier to do this than redraw your text box.
• If you don’t like your text box after you draw it, you can do a ctrl+z
• Draw a table zone around tables (this option is a drop-down option from the Draw Text Zone t)
— You can insert row dividers and column dividers by using the button below the t
* ~ * It will show you a cursor that looks like >— . If you line up the center of the > with where you want your rows to be, it works very well.
IMPORTANT: When you are drawing text zones, it is very important to draw them in the order in which they should appear in the text. If you do them out of order, the paragraphs will get shuffled around when it goes to spit them out in the Word file. This causes a lot of panic and confusion down the line, particularly for those who don’t know why the paragraphs are suddenly out of order.
• To make sure your text zones are appearing in order, select “Change Zone Order” from the toolbar. This will show you numbers that tell you which order the paragraphs are currently going to appear in. Clicking on the paragraphs while in the “Change Zone Order” setting will change the order.
Step 2
After defining all of the text, you are ready to recognize the text.
1. Select all of the pages in the document by clicking one of the pages in the thumbnails, then pressing ctrl+a.
• For this stage you can deselect pages you don’t want or pages that only contain images, but this will remove them from the PDF and can cause problems later on.
2. Click the second button. This button has multiple options. You are always going to want Custom.
• If you have it set on something other than Custom, it will go back and redo all your work.
Step 3
1. Click “Save to Folder”
a. Make sure you are saving it to the folder you want it to be in.
b. Save both a searchable PDF and an RTF.
*** This is very important. If you do not have the OPD document saved and you forget to save one of these two things, you’re going to have to redo the whole document.
c. It’s important to make sure you save them with the right number. Whatever name you save them with really doesn’t matter at this step, as long as you save them with the right number.
d. Double-check the PDF when you’re done to make sure the OCR has worked on all the pages.
*** This can be done with ctrl+a. If it selects the text, it’s good. If it selects the entire page, including the margins and graphics, that page has been missed.
Pro tip: If you have scrolling enabled in Adobe, you’ll only have to hit ctrl +a once. If you don’t, you’ll have to hit ctrl+a for every page.
Pro tip: Adobe Acrobat X Pro works MUCH better than Adobe Acrobat DC. Make sure you open the PDF with the correct version.
NOTE: Sometimes, if you save the omnipage file that you are working on, close it, and come back to work on the omnipage later, it will undo some of your work and you won’t necessarily notice. This is particularly true of the image pages. This is part of the reason why the PDF needs to be checked. The other part is that sometimes the program just skips pages because it wants to. The final part is human error—you could easily have just missed a page.