(Archived) Newbie confused about OCR/Indexing!

[smohyee 0]

Hello all.

I really like the concept of being able to scan hard copies of docs into evernote and have its "best-of-breed" OCR pick out the actual text for later searches. In fact, that's my main reason for trying out this service. But despite reading through the forums and knowledge base, I'm having difficulty getting a few basic questions answered:

1) How long on average does it take for a free member's documents to be indexed?

2) Is there a convenient way to tell if my scans have been indexed yet? Like, a little checkbox or msg telling me so in the evernote app?

3) I understand that PDFs of doc scans will be processed, but what about JPGs of doc scans? Are all image formats acceptable for indexing?

4) My primary tool for scanning documents is my smartphone, which has a good 8mp camera with flash and a scanning app. I can certainly read the documents I scan with it just fine. The question is, how can I know if its good enough quality for Evernotes indexing ability?

Thanks to all who can help out with some info!

As an aside to Evernote:

I have to say I'm usually pretty good at finding info I need, but these questions seem fairly basic and yet appear nowhere in your FAQs (there were only PDF specific questions). Maybe the OCR service you guys offer is so old everyone knows about it? Well, having never used Evernote before, I didn't. I really think information about your OCR/indexing service should be made more clearly and readily available on your website. Literally EVERYTHING I currently know about this service, I learned form 3rd party forums, blogs and reviews.

[fraktol 0]

I agree that these questions should be addressed on the Evernote website.

There is actually no information on www.evernote.com that explains the OCR process and sets any expecations. In my humble opinion, this is pretty questionable from a customer service perspective.

You can't just have a good product, folks.

[TechBarber 100]

+1 - looked for these answers myself just a few weeks ago.

[jbenson2 2,149]

In my opinion, there is a lot of confusion about Evernote's OCR process, and the current documentation does not help resolve it.

There are 2 types of OCR

• Text recognition inside images (printed and handwritten text made searchable)
  Search within PDF's

Here are just a few posts about OCR that I have posted:

Question: What does Evernote recommend for the best OCR settings?

http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=23320&p=100474&hilit=OCR#p100474

Question: What kind of documents cause the "not all resources on this note are indexed for searching"

http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=22589&p=100793&hilit=OCR#p100793

Question: What is the icon that shows when the OCR is completed?

http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=23286&p=104000&hilit=OCR#p104000

Comment: The OCR search results will vary between Web and Client

http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=24304&p=104332&hilit=OCR#p104356

Help might be on the way. (as long as the documentation includes concrete examples of what has been improved)

Dave Engberg comment: Better OCR PDF processing in the works

http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=17733&p=100704&hilit=OCR#p100628

.