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Business Card Text Recognition


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Hi we don't currently convert existing photos of business cards or Hello notes into the new format.  The functionality in this release only handles photos of business cards taken with the new camera.  We are looking at how to handle existing photos and Hello notes and may include some functionality in a future release.

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And when I scan a business card using Evernote, is it supposed to automatically recognize the text on the business card (name, phone number, etc.) like it does in Hello?

 

I see that once I scan a card in Evernote, it provides me with fields that I can enter the person's name and phone number off the card, but it doesn't seem to pre-populate those fields with auto-recognized text from the cards.  (Like it does in Hello.)

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I really like the business-card scanning feature.

But it would be very nice if Evernote could export to Contacts. I don't want to have two sets of contact data, and if the data were exported to Contacts, I'd be able to edit it more easily. You could also have Evernote throw its notes into a Contacts group, for ease of correcting the data (in case the name was scanned wrong, for instance).

This probably isn't in this release--but It's a really important feature to add.

Otherwise, I love Evernote! The primary use case for my new iPad Air (which replaces an iPad 2 from work) was for a better camera... for Evernote.

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@LkwdBrian

 

The recognition server is exactly the same as the one in Hello.  If you are not getting any recognized information from the card, it may be that you don't have sufficient light when taking the picture or there is some aspect of the design of the card (e.g. odd font, multi color cards, etc) that may be preventing the recognition from happening.

 

See this video for some tips but the process should be the same as Hello except that in Evernote we don't automatically take the picture for you.

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@Mitch

 

We did include a feature to save to contacts.  Just go to Evernote Settings > Business Cards  and turn on "Save contact info to Contacts" and you should be set.  If its not working immediately, we do have a bug where if you have previously denied access to your Contacts app to Evernote we don't let you know.  To fix this, just go to iOS Settings > Privacy > Contacts and enable access to Evernote.  This should allow you to save your contact information to your Contacts app.

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I am having the same issue that @MCheng is having. Very well-lit photos of non-glossy business taken with the Business Card scanning option in the Evernote update do not recognize any text. I have tried this using all of the tips shown in the video and Evernote help pages – light cards on dark backgrounds, dark cards on light backgrounds, and even a fake 3 x 2" card I created with nothing but Arial text on a white piece of paper. All of these work fine and recognize the text in Hello, but none of them recognize any text in Evernote.

 

Please help!

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Same problem here. I tried scanning the same card under the same conditions with my iPhone5 and my iPad3, my wife's iPhone4s and my colleague's iPhone5. All three of us have premium Evernote accounts. Neither of my devices auto-populated the text fields, but both of theirs did. Seems to be a setting or problem with my account and not my device(s). Very frustrating. Any ideas?

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi 

 

This problem seems to be very difficult to reproduce and trace.  The issue may not be with the card as some people report the same card working with Evernote Hello but not with Evernote.  I've had 2 situations that have reported that uninstalling and reinstalling makes the problem go away.

 

If you are in need of a quick fix, please make sure all your information is saved and sync'ed to another Evernote client before attempting to uninstall and reinstall to see if that fixes the problem.

 

If you don't mind sharing more information about the cards you are working with, please let me know and I will contact you directly.

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@DanBrazelton

 

If the uninstall / reinstall worked then the problem isn't with the card but rather with the state of your phone or the Evernote app.

 

Can everyone that seemed to have problems with OCR where uninstall/reinstall worked, please describe as best as possible how you upgraded to the version of Evernote with business card scanning.  

- What version of the OS are you running?

- Did you upgrade the OS and Evernote at the same time?

- Which version of Evernote were you running before you upgraded to this version?

- Are there any special apps or settings you may have turned on - e.g. Assistive Touch setting, etc

 

If you are considering uninstalling and reinstalling to see if this fixes things, can you reach out to me via PM so that I can get your activity logs before and after as well.  

 

Any info you can provide, no matter how small, will help us track this bug down.  Thanks.

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- What version of the OS are you running?  


7.0.4


- Did you upgrade the OS and Evernote at the same time?


No.


- Which version of Evernote were you running before you upgraded to this version?


The latest as of last week.  I don't see any upgrades either.  I don't see any place to see the current version.


 


- Are there any special apps or settings you may have turned on - e.g. Assistive Touch setting, etc


Nope.  Pretty vanilla.

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I had exactly the same issue. Tried everything to resolve it, but only a delete and re-install of the evernote app fixed it. All my offline notebooks now have to be setup again. 

 

Now I need a way to convert all my old card photos into the new contact style note. Talking of the contact style note, are there plans to be able to create a new note from scratch, say on the desktop app, in the contact style?

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Hi 

 

We just got a break through and may have discovered the root cause of the issue.  The situation only happens in a corner upgrade case and there is a simpler workaround than uninstalling and reinstalling.  If you have a very simple card AND are using good lighting but are still getting no results, you should be able to just log out and then log back in and that should fix the issue.  We are testing a Beta of 7.2.2. now that fixes this issue.

 

Thanks for everyone's patience and help in diagnosing this issue.  This one was really tough to dig out and we couldn't have found the issue without your help.

 

-- Martin

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 6 months later...

The format resulting from using Evernote's business card scanning camera is *far* superior to the Hello format. (Hello listings, with their blue phone numbers agains a black background, are well nigh unreadable.) It the scanning format were a standard template for all contact info - from Hello, from the scanning camera, from imported photos of business cards, and as a form that can be filled in by typing - then Evernote would really become a contacts powerhouse. As it is, it's merely an occasional adjunct to other systems.

 

And speaking of the scanning camera, the inability of the user to turn off the flash is a real pain. Taking the photo from an angle is a crude and not terribly effective technique compared to simply using good natural light, which is more diffuse and provides glare-free images even on cards printed on coated stock. 

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