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DocScan Pro OCR User Manual | |
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SolarSys DocScan Pro OCR is a document scanning and image retrieval system. It is designed to be straightforward to use and support the requirements of business users. It is proven for both high volume, multiple document back office use and low volume front office scanning and image retrieval. It provides you with a familiar interface for organising your documents into folders locally on your c: drive or on your office network via a drive mapping or the network neighborhood. Integrated with this is the document image scanning and viewing function that enables you to view and manage multiple page documents such as letters, faxes, reports, invoices, brochures and any other business documents that you handle in your business. You can share documents with colleagues or you can print them, fax them or attach them to an email and send them wherever they need to go. DocScan Pro OCR provides a professional and convenient method of storing and sharing your paper information. DocScan Pro OCR has many advanced scanning features. In addition to scanning individual documents (single or multi-page), you can add new pages to existing documents, scan a batch of many documents in one go (your scanner needs to have a sheet feeder to allow this) and combine several documents into one. You can simplify varied and repetitive scanning tasks by defining document templates. This means you can ensure that all batches of similar documents such as invoices and client or patient records are scanned in the same way each time. Publish your documents on the Internet by scanning them directly to PDF format - a portable document format that is used extensively on the Internet and can be read using freely available PDF reader software. DocScan Pro OCR is the easiest way of getting your paper documents directly into this easy to view, Web publishing format. Scan your incoming paper post and automatically email each document to the correct email address. This is perhaps the easiest way to reduce the paper in your office and means all your mobile workers can receive their post wherever they are! Remember that computer files need to be backed up to prevent data loss. Contact SolarSys for details of our straighforward backup solutions Disk Shadow and Notebook Shadow (specifically for laptop PCs). Visit our web site at www.solarsys.co.uk for more information. If you have any comments on DocScan Pro OCR or would like us to add functionality to it then please contact us at SolarSys either by phone or email using the address at the end of this guide. We continually work at improving our products and can usually incorporate enhancements very quickly. [ contents ] Select the twain source, e.g. your scanner or digital camera, from the list using the Files Menu, Select TWAIN Source. If there are no sources in the list then you will need to load the software drivers that came with your device. Once you have selected your source device you can start scanning your documents. [ contents ] You can create a new document image by scanning your paper document through your scanner. You can scan a single page document or a multi-page document if your scanner has a multi-page feed. If you do not have a multi-page feed then scan the first page and then use the Add additional pages feature described below to create multi-page document files. Scan into folder - The new document image will be saved into the folder that is selected in the Explore section. The folder is displayed in the 'Scan into folder' item on the Document Title and Scan Options form. If the folder is not the one you want to use you can change it very easily. Note you do not have to close the Document Title and Scan Options form to change the folder, just click in the Explore section and find or create the folder you want or use the Favourite Folders feature. Enter a title for the document (or leave blank for auto title) - When you scan a new document you are given the opportunity to give the new file a meaningful name. Include as many key words as you wish in the name to make it easier to find the file using DocScan Pro OCR's built in search facility. Use meaningful folder names because you can search for folders as well as for files. If you do not provide a name DocScan Pro OCR will generate a unique name for you. You can change the file name later using the normal Windows renaming mechanism in the Explore section. You can define more advanced automatic file naming using a Document Template. Automatic Document Feed options - If you have a single document to scan select the option to accumulate all pages into a single document. If you have many single page documents then these can be scanned in a batch. Select the appropriate Automatic Document Feed Option. Each document will be given a unique name and sequence number within the batch so you can easily step through each one. See section Rapid renaming of batch files for help in renaming a series of files efficiently without needing to use the mouse. If you wish to scan a batch of multiple page documents you can easily define a Document Template to do this. File type - Select the file type that is most appropriate to the document you are scanning. For most documents, such as correspondence and reports, black and white TIF files are the most appropriate. If you intend to publish the document on the Internet use the PDF format. Note that you can easily convert TIF and JPG files to PDF files at a later date using DocScan Pro OCR. If there is more than one page in your document then you will need to use TIF or PDF. If you want to scan single color images then you should use JPG as this gives much smaller files. Note however that JPG only supports single page documents. Templates - Defining and using templates is an advanced and very useful feature of DocScan Pro OCR and is covered in detail in a later section. You do not need to use a template before you can start scanning your documents - just remove the check on the 'Use template' checkbox. Click here to read about setting up templates now. If you wish to use a template to scan your documents select the appropriate template in the list and check the 'Use template' checkbox. You can load the template from the default template folder or from the current scan folder using the 'Template folder' option provided. Change the default folder using the Change button. We have a provided a short cut F9 key to scan a new document. This means that there is no need to use a mouse when you are scanning many documents one after the other. [ contents ] The quality of the document image you achieve is dependent on the scanner resolution (in dots per inch - dpi) that you set within the scanner's own setup routine. For text documents using black & white we find that a resolution of 200-300 dpi provides a good balance between quality and image file size. If you increase the resolution you increase the resulting file size. This is particularly relevant if you are scanning in color where the file sizes can get very large. Use the JPG file type if you are scanning in color. You should experiment to find the resolution that suits your purpose. DocScan Pro OCR is designed for business use where the requirement is mainly for many black & white scanned documents and also for home or recreational use where color scanning may be more important. [ contents ] Use the Explore section to browse your folders and files and select the file you wish to view. The top panel in the section lists all the drives and folders you have on your computer and network neighborhood. You can create new folders using the F8 key or the File, New Folder menu. The centre panel lists all the folders and image files that you have in the folder selected in the top panel. View an image file using a single left mouse button click. Double click on a folder or non-image file, such as a word processing document, to open it. You can list all files in a folder or filter out non-image files using the Filter Menu. You can click on the column titles to sort the list by that column. This is useful when you want to find the most recent scanned document for example. Full explorer style functionality (e.g. deletion, cut & paste, drag & drop, send to, properties etc) is available to you in both the top and centre panels so you can organise your documents and make them easy for you (and your colleagues) to find the files you want. It is easy to change the name of a file or several files. Just follow the instructions on Rapid renaming of files given below. [ contents ] Use the Find section to search for folders and files by name and or date. In addition, you can search the long document description for TIF files. Just enter a key word into the name search field (above the name column) and click on the 'binocular button' (or hit the Return key) to initiate the search. You can search either the whole drive which you are currently exploring in the Explore section or you can search the currently selected folder and sub-folders. Select the Whole Drive Search option in the Option menu to search the whole drive. For example, if you select the c: drive in the Explore section, enter 'letter' in the name search field and press return (or click the binocular button) then DocScan Pro OCR will find all the folders and files, on the c: drive of your computer, that contain the word 'letter'. You can also use the * wild card in the search. If you want to find a folder only then enter \ as the first character of the search name. To search on date click in the second search field and a date selection form will help you select a particular date or date range. The result of the search is displayed in the results list. You can sort the list by clicking on a column title. Folders are represented with a \ as the first character. Selecting a folder will open that folder in the Explore section. Selecting a file will view that file in the Document Image section. You can clear the search results by right clicking on the results list and stop the search using the 'binocular button'. [ contents ] The image of the document selected in the explore section is displayed in this section along with a thumbnail image for each page in the document. You can select a page for viewing by clicking on the thumbnail or by using the green up/down arrows. You can also use the keyboard by using Pg Up, Pg Dn, Home and End. The yellow up/down arrows allow you to reorder the pages if they were not scanned in the correct sequence. You can rotate a page using the green rotation arrow as an alternative to the Image menu item. You can delete a page using the red X. A deleted page is marked for deletion and will actually be deleted when you save your changes. To undelete a page before saving use the green X. Short cut tool buttons are provided for saving changes, printing, scanning a new document, adding new pages to the existing viewed document, interleaving odd and even pages so that you can scan double sided documents (without the need for a duplex scanner) and photocopying a document. You can also use the menu items under the Image Menu to manipulate images. [ contents ] Document image section, size and zooming The viewed image can be displayed in three main modes, plus a fixed zoom percentage and a zoom to selected area. The Actual size is based on the scan resolution and is not the actual size of the original document. The higher the resolution the bigger the actual image size. You can short cut to this view size by clicking on the view area just outside of the scanned image. If the image is too big to be viewed in actual size then you can use width or best fit or drag the image into view by holding down the left mouse button on the image and dragging it. This activates both scroll bars simultaneously. The Width size fits the image into the view area using as much width as there is available. This is a good size for reading documents although, if you have a smaller monitor, you may need to go to full screen view or expand the view area temporarily at the expense of the Explore section area. Drag the splitter bar separating the two areas to do this. Note that all areas can be expanded or shrunk like this. You can short cut to this view by clicking on the image near the edge. The Best fit size fits the whole page into the viewing area. You can short cut to this view by clicking on the centre of the image. You can zoom into an area of the image by clicking with the right mouse button on the image, holding the button down and dragging the cursor over the image. When you release the button the view will zoom into the selected area. You can copy the zoomed area onto the clipboard for copying into other applications or use the File, Save loaded image as menu item to save the zoomed image. Click once on the zoomed area to return to the previous view if you were using a % zoom. [Note that the right mouse button zoom feature is disabled if you have selected the option (in the Option menu) to use the right mouse button to capture text for automated document indexing. Click here for more details.] To select a fixed zoom as a percentage of the actual image size use the small magnifying glass on the right edge of the page thumbnail image or the Image, Zoom menu item. Note that the images load and view more quickly if you use actual size or select a fixed % zoom. [ contents ] The full screen view button is located to the right above the main image. Click this button to fill the form with the image and page thumbnails. This is useful when you want to read the details on a document image. You can navigate up and down the files in the current folder using the up and down arrow keys while viewing in full screen mode. This means that you can step through many files in a folder while viewing a large, easy to read image of each. Use the short cut key F4 to view the image in full screen and return to normal viewing. Note that you can view the pages of a multiple page document very quickly by making the page thumbnails much larger and using the scroll bar to scroll up and down the pages. This is very useful if your document has many pages and you want to browse to find a particular section. [ contents ] Files menu, Add additional pages Add a new page or pages to the open document image. SolarSys DocScan Pro OCR will scan your documents in the format you have selected, either TIF or JPG. DocScan Pro will allow you to view existing images in different formats e.g. JPG, BMP, PNG etc. Use the short cut key F10 to add a new page without the need to use a mouse. [ contents ] Files menu, Scan and insert even numbered pages Scan a multi page double sided document with a single sided scanner. First place the document face down on the automatic document feeder (ADF) and scan the odd numbered pages. Then place the document face up on the ADF and use this menu option (or the "1+2" button on the toolbar or the F11 key) to scan the even numbered pages. DocScan will merge the two scans to form a single document with all the pages correctly sequenced. Use the short cut key F11 to scan the even numbered pages of a double sided document without the need to use a mouse. [ contents ] Files menu, Photocopy document You can use DocScan to photocopy a document without saving it to a file. The photocopying feature will scan your document and then print it directly to the printer defined by the Print Setup settings. Use the short cut key F12 to photocopy the document without the need to use a mouse. [ contents ] You can create a new folder to store your new documents or to reorganise existing ones. If you want to reorganise existing files then use the cut & paste and drag & drop features of the Explore section to make this task easy. The features are available using the right mouse button on one or more folders or files. Use the short cut key F8 to add a new folder without the need to use a mouse. [ contents ] Files menu, Print setup and print You can print one or more pages of a document. To get the best quality print set the Document Image view to Actual Size. This is done automatically for you when you use the photocopying feature. You can fax one or many pages by simply printing your document to your fax 'machine' if you have fax software installed. Use the Print Setup menu item to define the printer and any print options you wish to use. If you wish to print a document that has been scanned and rotated to landscape then you should select the landscape print option in the Print Setup. If your printer reverses the order of pages when you print (as our does!) you can counteract this by reversing the order that DocScan Pro OCR prints the pages. Click here to find out where to set this option. [ contents ] Select Save or press the save shortcut on the tool bar (diskette button) to save any changes such as reordering pages. New document and additional page scans are saved automatically for you. [ contents ] Files menu, Save loaded image as You can save the current image (page) as a new document or append it to an existing document. The existing document can be the current document and the image will save as a new page if the file is a TIF file or overwrite the original if it is a JPG file. This feature is particularly useful for cropping images, i.e. removing unwanted borders or picking out just the image you want. To do this you simply zoom to the area of the image you want to keep and then save the image as a new document or as the same document. If you wish to change the format of the image then remove the file extension (i.e. .TIF or .JPG) from the file name and select the extension you want from the 'Files of type' drop down list. Alternatively, just type the file extension you want onto the end of your new file name and DocScan Pro OCR will save the file in the format you requested. IMPORTANT NOTE: DocScan Pro OCR maintains the size and zoom you have selected for your image when you save the image as a new file or page. If you do not wish to reduce the image size then select actual size before saving. [ contents ] You can close or clear the current document image by selecting the Close document menu item or by clicking with the left mouse button on any empty (white) area of the centre section of the Explore section. [ contents ] You can copy the image being viewed to the clipboard and then paste it into another application such as a word processing package. You can copy a whole page or zoom into a relevant section before copying to the clipboard. When you copy to the clipboard DocScan Pro OCR maintains the image size and zoom you have selected. This means that you can get just the right image you want to copy to your other applications. [ contents ] Combine two or more documents into one document. You can elect to copy the original documents into the new document or move (cut) the original documents into the new document. Help is provided on the Combine Documents form. Extend the form vertically if the help is not visible. [ contents ] Edit menu, Convert to .PDF format DocScan Pro OCR provides you with all you need to convert paper documents into electronic form that you can publish on the Internet. You can scan your paper documents, manipulate the pages as necessary and combine two or more documents to produce exactly the right information to make available on your Web site. If you want to publish a document on the Internet using the PDF format but you have scanned it using TIF or JPG then simply select the document and use this menu item to convert it to PDF. [ contents ] Edit menu, Interleave odd and even pages Use this function to combine two scans (the odd and even pages of a double sided document) into one document. After selecting this option, follow the instructions on the dialog box that pops up. [ contents ] This feature allows you to keep a list of folders that you use regularly or would like to be able to navigate to easily. When you are in a folder that you would like to list as a favourite folder simply use the 'Add' sub-menu of the Favourite Folders menu. You can also remove folders from the list by opening the folder and using the 'Remove' sub-menu. To navigate to a favourite folder simply select the folder from the Favourite Folder menu item list and your folder will be opened for you. [ contents ] The View menu configures the view for the folder and file Explore section. [ contents ] Filter the files you see in the Explore section. You can view all file types or just image files. If you are viewing all file types then click once on a file for a quick view of the file contents and double click on a file to launch the appropriate application for the file. DocScan Pro OCR lets you view many file types quickly and we will continue to add viewing for unsupported file types in future releases. [ contents ] The Image menu allows you to manipulate the image such as rotating and zooming. Note that images can be quicker to load and view if you select a % zoom or actual size rather than a best fit or a width fit. You will find you get best performance by using actual size or a zoom % that suits the dpi scan resolution you use and your screen resolution. For more information on manipulating document pages read the Image Section. [ contents ] Options menu, Background Colour You can change the background color to suit your own taste. [ contents ] Options menu, Show document thumbnails Select this option to view a panel of thumbnail images of the files in the directory you have selected in the Explore section. You can select one of these thumbnail images to view the document in full. Hover the cursor over the title of the thumbnail to see the full title. Use the scroll bar to scroll up and down the list of thumbnails. If you want to see more or less thumbnails you can increase the size of the thumbnail area and reselect (move off and back on) the folder in the Explore section. [ contents ] Options menu, Show document description Select this option to display a long description of TIF documents. Enter or edit a document description by typing into the description field. Save your changes once you have finished. The document description field is an excellent place to enter some key words that can be used to find the document at a later date. The built in search method searches the document description automatically. Remember scanned documents are images of the paper document and don't have all the words individual held (as opposed to a word processing document). [ contents ] Options menu, Search whole drive , Search folder structure from root, Search folder structure only These menu options define the scope of the DocScan search: Search whole drive will cause all folders in the selected drive to be searched. For example, if you are reviewing images in folder c:\My Documents\Scans then the search will traverse all folders on the c: drive. Search folder structure from root will cause all folders in the selected folder's base folder structure to be searched. For example, if you are reviewing images in folder c:\My Documents\Scans then the search will traverse all folders in the \My Documents folder heirarchy. Search folder structure only will cause all folders in the selected folder's structure to be searched. For example, if you are reviewing images in folder c:\My Documents\Scans then the search will traverse all folders in the \My Documents\Scans folder heirarchy. For details of how to find your documents please click here. [ contents ] Options menu, Print pages in reverse sequence Select this option to print the pages of a document in reverse order. This is useful if your printer tends to reverse the order (as our printer does!) because it saves you reordering the pages after printing. Read the Print section for more information on printing. [ contents ] Options menu, Right mouse button zoom Select this option to enable zooming on the right mouse button. To zoom into a document, click the top left hand corner of the area you want to zoom then, while holding the mouse button down, drag the mouse across to the bottom right hand corner of the area you want to zoom and release the mouse button. The selected area will be shown enlarged. To view this area at actual size, click the mouse just outside the edge of the zoomed image (this technique is useful for saving a cropped view of an image using the "File, Save loaded image as" menu item).[ contents ] Options menu, Right mouse button OCR Select this option to enable (Optical Character Recognition) on the right mouse button. To OCR an area of a document, click the top left hand corner of the area you want to OCR then, while holding the mouse button down, drag the mouse across to the bottom right hand corner of the area you want to OCR and release the mouse button. An OCR scatchpad and a word index form will appear. This feature is useful for copying an address from a scanned letter for pasting into your word processor and for choosing words to add to the fast search index.[ contents ] Options menu, Associate .TIF and .JPG files with DocScan Pro OCR Select this option to specify that DocScan Pro OCR should be used to open all TIF and JPG files. This is useful because Windows will use DocScan Pro OCR if, for example, you double-click on a TIF file that has been sent to you or you have found within Microsoft Explorer. Deselect this option if you wish to revert to the previous association. [ contents ] DocScan Pro OCR is delivered with English as the default language. We have provided a mechanism by which you can translate virtually all the text and labels you can see and configure DocScan to default to your own language. We are building up a set of translations for your convenience so please visit our Web site at www.solarsys.co.uk to see if there is already a translation available for your language. If there is a translation available then download it and copy it to the Languages sub-folder of the DocScan Pro OCR program files folder (by default this is c:\Program Files\SolarSys\DocScan Pro\Languages). If there is NO translation available then you will need to create your own. Select the Language menu, New language menu item. Enter the name of your language as you would like it to appear in the Language menu. The language file contains many words and phrases and you should translate these to suit your needs. Each word or phrase must be kept in the correct format for the translation to work. The format for each word or phrase is: English word or phrase=Your translation Once you have saved your new language file select the Language menu, Refresh to load your language. DocScan Pro OCR will now display using your language file as the default. You can edit the current language using the Edit language menu item. When you have saved your amendments remember to refresh the language to see your changes. [ contents ] The document tags form displays and also allows you to enter some information about the document such as the date created and the scanner used. The document long description is displayed and can be edited. The Default tags page allows you to define the default tags to use for all new documents scanned. Note that document tags are only relevant for TIF files. [ contents ] Templates allow you store various scan settings and reuse them to perform repetitive scanning tasks. This means that you only need to define how to scan a particular type of document once and then anyone can scan those documents correctly. You can define as many templates as you need and organise your templates in the way that is most convenient to you. New Template - Before you can create a new template you need to scan an example of the document you want the template for and view the document in DocScan Pro OCR. When you are viewing either a TIF or JPG document you can select the New Template menu item. Zones - A template consists of one or more zones on the document. Zone 1 is created for you automatically. You can add new zones to a template using the New Zone menu item. Each zone in the template is displayed on the document with a zone number label and a zone description label. Some types of zone also have a zone area. Right click on the zone number label to access the properties of the zone or to delete the zone. There are several different types of zone that you can use to control the way a document is scanned. The properties for each of these zone types is described below in the order in which they are processed during scanning. Document defaults - This zone type can be positioned anywhere on the document page and does not have a zone area. The document defaults zone allows you to define:-
Page rotation - This zone type can be used to automatically rotate pages during the scanning process. The zone type has a zone area and the size and position of this may be important depending on the zone properties you set. You can make the rotation conditional on the zone area being empty which you can use to selectively rotate some pages and not others. The zone properties are:-
Page
anchor - This zone type can be used to accurately position all of the
other zones by anchoring on a recognisable text character. This is only
necessary if you need to define the zone areas tightly around the document
marks or text.
The position and size of the zone area are important. Position the zone where your front page mark is placed (it must be in the same place on each front page. Size the zone area so that the front page mark covers at least 1/2 the height and 1/2 the width of the zone. For example you could put a mark in the top right hand corner of the front page of each document (such as an X or ü ) approximately 1/2 to 1cm in from the top right hand corner. If there are no front page marks on any page then DocScan Pro OCR will generate a separate file for each sheet in the batch. The zone properties are:-
The main benefits of the bar sequence are that it is very reliable (it is unlikely that any of your documents will have a bar sequence in the zone area unless you have put it there specifically) and you can generate document separator pages using your word processing software. Just print a sequence of 8 '|' characters in a suitable position on a single page and you have a reliable document separator page. Note you can also use code 39 bar codes to detect the start of a new document. The zone properties are:-
Code 39 bar code - This zone type allows you to detect and use bar codes for automatically naming and indexing your documents and for starting a new document in a batch of multiple page documents. The bar codes can be horizontal or vertical. Position and size the zone or zones to suit the position of your bar codes. The zone properties are:-
Text OCR (SolarSys) - This zone type allows you to detect and use text on the document for automatically naming and indexing your documents and for starting a new document in a batch of multiple page documents (OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition). Position and size the zone or zones to suit the position of your text. Note that this is designed to read index information rather than to perform full text recognition. If this is essential to your scanning requirements please contact us and we will be pleased to discuss this with you. You can improve the reliability of the OCR detection if you can select one or more of the 'OCR text contains' options. The zone properties are:-
Change template folder - DocScan Pro OCR has a default folder into which it saves your templates as you create them. You can change this default and also save to other folders that are not the default. This means that you can organise your templates into folders that help you and other users to find the correct template to use. Load template from - A particularly useful folder to save a template to is the folder into which you save documents that you scan using the template. When you are scanning a new document and setting the scan options you can select the template to use from either the default folder or the scan folder. Use the 'Load template from...' menu options to set this option in advance. [ contents ]
DocScan Pro OCR can be used to scan one or more documents and email each document
to an email recipient (note the recipient can be a single person or a group of
people). For example, we have a customer who scans all incoming paper post and
emails the electronic documents automatically to the correct people. This saves
them using resources to manually distribute paper post.
A common task for many users of DocScan Pro OCR is to step through a set of files, that have been scanned using the batch scanning facility, to add a useful name and key words to each file. This section should help you to do this efficiently.
DocScan Pro OCR remembers the last folder you were working in when you closed the application and will open in the same directory so that you can carry on with your work. The application will open to the same size, position and state in which you closed it last. [ contents ] DocScan Pro OCR comes in two variants to provide you with a full range of scanning and image viewing software for your business. Use DocScan Pro OCR for your volume scanning requirements at all your scanning workstations and deploy DocScan to all your front office PCs to make sure your staff have all the information they need at their finger tips.
Thank you for choosing SolarSys DocScan Pro OCR The development team at SolarSys hope you enjoy many fruitful and trouble free years using DocScan Pro OCR. Look out for upgrades posted on our web site at www.solarsys.co.uk or send us a message to let us know what you think of the software. Contact us by clicking here if you have any questions or comments. If you are using an unlicensed version of DocScan Pro OCR please use it for test and evaluation purposes only. Visit our web site for details of registration and prices or read the license information supplied with this software. SolarSys Limited, 165 Albury Drive, Pinner, Middlesex, HA5 3RH, England. [ contents ] |
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