Viewing .enex files

[Daxediw 0]

New user of the Moleskine Evernote notebook here.

I've successfully captured a handwritten note. The servers have done their OCR stuff and it is searchable.

Now I have exported the note in .enex format into a local file.

Question is . . . how can I convert this file to readable text? If I open it with Word or Notepad, it is gibberish.

Obviously I need some software to translate this file. What software should I use?

Thanks in advance.

[EdH 1,670]

Evernote. That is what ENEX files are for. 

The format is XML. If you want to tear into it, you'll need to look at their developer pages.

An OCR handwritten note though will have binary file attachments encoded as text in the ENEX export, so have fun with that.

[DTLow 5,737]

2 hours ago, Daxediw said:

Question is . . . how can I convert this file to readable text? If I open it with Word or Notepad, it is gibberish.

You don't want to export to .enex format.

I believe you have a note with an attachment in PDF or image format
You need to save the attachment.  
You can also export the note to html format -  it's much more readable than the enex format and the attachments are exported intact

The Evernote ocr process is only for search purposes.
To make your attachment readable text, you need to process it with ocr software (actually ICR software)

 

[jefito 5,589]

An ENEX file won't do it. All it contains are guesses at words that it may have recognized at particular locations in the image (your handwritten note, in this case), in no particular order. That is, if it looks at a particular section of the image and see something that might be, say, "company" at some pixel location, there's an entry for that, but maybe it might equally be, say, "compass", in which case there's an entry for that, at the same pixel location. As noted above, this helps in search, but there's no stream of text produced that you could read left-to-right and top-to-bottom like you could a paragraph.

[Daxediw 0]

48 minutes ago, DTLow said:

You don't want to export to .enex format.

I believe you have a note with an attachment in PDF or image format
You need to save the attachment.  
You can also export the note to html format -  it's much more readable than the enex format and the attachments are exported intact

The Evernote ocr process is only for search purposes.
To make your attachment readable text, you need to process it with ocr software (actually ICR software)

 

Thanks for your input. So, what you are saying is that even though Evernote has created a file that is searchable (as in, all the handwritten words in the note have been converted into searchable text) there is no way to export that file in such a way that it can be displayed as the actual digitized text. That in fact I would need to scan this note with some other OCR (or ICR) software and not attempt to use the Evernote OCR-created file at all?

[Daxediw 0]

2 minutes ago, jefito said:

An ENEX file won't do it. All it contains are guesses at words that it may have recognized at particular locations in the image (your handwritten note, in this case), in no particular order. That is, if it looks at a particular section of the image and see something that might be, say, "company" at some pixel location, there's an entry for that, but maybe it might equally be, say, "compass", in which case there's an entry for that, at the same pixel location. As noted above, this helps in search, but there's no stream of text produced that you could read left-to-right and top-to-bottom like you could a paragraph.

Thank you for a very clear explanation of this process. I now understand how this functions and I don't need to chase down a path that leads to a dead end.

 

[jefito 5,589]

You're welcome.

Note that this discussion relates only to Evernote's OCR. Other OCR might be able to produce such a stream; I'm not really a big OCR user, so I can't testify any further. BTW, "company"/"compass" were taken from some OCR of my own handwriting...

[DTLow 5,737]

On 2016-12-30 at 0:36 PM, Daxediw said:

That in fact I would need to scan this note with some other OCR (or ICR) software and not attempt to use the Evernote OCR-created file at all?

That's right

 I use the Evernote search-OCR, but many user's have OCR built into their scanners and they skip the Evernote process.

Handwriting is even more tricky and less reliable (or it might be my handwriting skills)

[Daxediw 0]

24 minutes ago, DTLow said:

That's right

 I use the Evernote OCR, but many user's have OCR built into their scanners and they skip the Evernote process.

Handwriting is even more tricky and less reliable (or it might be my handwriting skills)

So, are you saying you can obtain a digitized OCR text file of your written notes using the Evernote OCR?

Or are you simply referring to the process that Evernote uses to create the search-ability of your note?

[DTLow 5,737]

1 minute ago, Daxediw said:

So, are you saying you can obtain a digitized OCR text file of your written notes using the Evernote OCR?

Or are you simply referring to the process that Evernote uses to create the search-ability of your note?

That's what I'm referring to - I use the Evernote OCR search process
I don't have digitized OCR'd text files

 

[Daxediw 0]

1 minute ago, DTLow said:

That's what I'm referring to - I use the Evernote OCR search process
I don't have digitized OCR'd text files

 

Good information. Thanks for your help on this.