pc3000
asked on
results from Acrobat paper capture cause word to freeze
Win XP
Acrobat 9 Standard
Word 2003
I've scanned a handful of documents (printed emails, FWIW) to a 10-page PDF. Fairly clean results, all text, no graphics, a bit of formatting to deal with, but nothing that OCR shouldn't be able to handle.
Using Acrobat 9 Standard, I ran OCR Text Recognition from the Document menu.
Trouble is, when I try to extract the results, other applications completely melt down.
For example:
Select Text Tool > copy all text to clipboard > paste into new Outlook message > freeze
File > Export > Word Document > open the resulting word doc > freeze
Have tried sending the resulting Word doc to other computers and they get the same thing. Word starts behaving much the same way as when it tries to open a heavily formatted/poorly formatted/corrupt document.
I can, however, use the Select Text tool to copy out of Acrobat and paste into Notepad, then copy/paste out of there into wherever I want it, but it's tedious. I've also had limited success copying one sentence or one small paragraph at a time directly into into Word or Outlook.
I understand that:
1.OCR is more art than science
2. going from PDF to Word is akin to unscrambling an egg
3. there are other products other than Adobe that handle it with more finesse
...but is there a way to export OCR'd text from Adobe in one step without Office freaking out? Maybe some settings that I'm missing?
Acrobat 9 Standard
Word 2003
I've scanned a handful of documents (printed emails, FWIW) to a 10-page PDF. Fairly clean results, all text, no graphics, a bit of formatting to deal with, but nothing that OCR shouldn't be able to handle.
Using Acrobat 9 Standard, I ran OCR Text Recognition from the Document menu.
Trouble is, when I try to extract the results, other applications completely melt down.
For example:
Select Text Tool > copy all text to clipboard > paste into new Outlook message > freeze
File > Export > Word Document > open the resulting word doc > freeze
Have tried sending the resulting Word doc to other computers and they get the same thing. Word starts behaving much the same way as when it tries to open a heavily formatted/poorly formatted/corrupt document.
I can, however, use the Select Text tool to copy out of Acrobat and paste into Notepad, then copy/paste out of there into wherever I want it, but it's tedious. I've also had limited success copying one sentence or one small paragraph at a time directly into into Word or Outlook.
I understand that:
1.OCR is more art than science
2. going from PDF to Word is akin to unscrambling an egg
3. there are other products other than Adobe that handle it with more finesse
...but is there a way to export OCR'd text from Adobe in one step without Office freaking out? Maybe some settings that I'm missing?
Karl Heinz Kremer
Have you tried the "Save As" function in Acrobat? You should be able to save as text, RTF or MS Word document.
Have you tried using MS Office Document Imaging instead?
I just tried it and it looks like it works fairly well.
I just tried it and it looks like it works fairly well.
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Pretty much out of other ideas. Go for the close.
Have you tried exporting in RTF format? There seems to be a problem with copying and pasting some of the data - very likely not the content, but some formatting data. By going to RTF, you may be able to filter out the "stuff" that gives you problems.
ASKER
Ah, didn't think to try RTF. Will give it a shot.
ASKER
Nope, still get the meltdown with RTF. I can open the RTF file, but when I copy all text to the clipboard, the CPU peaks at 100% for about a minute, then subsides. Pasting into Outlook then causes both Outlook and Word to freeze and go Not Responding.
Grab a copy of Sysinternals and do a filemon/regmon and see what is going on. It may be a bad install.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx
ASKER
jimpen
Was able to reproduce the problem on a different PC with a fresh install of all products. Going to close the question with my workaround and/or take it up with Adobe. Thanks guys!
Was able to reproduce the problem on a different PC with a fresh install of all products. Going to close the question with my workaround and/or take it up with Adobe. Thanks guys!