(Archived) OCR and local storage

[Horlics 2]

Quick question...

 

I know that syncing a note containing a PDF with the Evernote servers after placing it in a sync'd notebook results in it being OCR'd.  What I am wondering is that if I at some point move the note to a local folder, does it remain searchable?

 

I have a Snapscan and use its software to OCR everything, enabling me to use local folders and search on contents.  I am dealing with legacy stuff the PDFs of which don't contain OCR info.

[Horlics 2]

Me again.  So after some more searching I found a thread where a user says that sync'd, OCR'd notes do remain searchable after being moved to local.  If true, great.

 

I know that Evernote's severs queue notes that need to be OCR'd so I am wondering if there is any way of looking at a note and knowing it has been OCR'd?  (apart from checking by searching)

[gazumped 9,556]

If you have a ScanSnap it usually comes bundled with PDF software to do the OCR.  If you load your legacy PDF into the app - or with Adobe if you point to a folder with several files in it - you can OCR the file from scratch and save as a searchable document.  Not sure how comprehensive Evernote's index will be if you then store these files in a local notebook - you might get a hit on the file,  but then have to search the file using the PDF search function to find the individual words.  If you have the chance to do some testing it would be interesting to know whether it works...

[gazumped 9,556]

...and if you're not a premium user your OCRs will get put into a queue and processed in turn.  Not actually sure how good the "processed" flag is these days,  but you will need to give the notes several hours - look for the little icon to the far right of the header.

[Horlics 2]

I wasn't aware of the processed flag, so thanks for that pointer.  I am a Premium user so hopefully my wait will be a bit shorter as a result.

 

The first thing I tried was loading my legacy stuff into Scansnap but I get the failure message "Non-Scansnap PDF".

 

Anyway, if Evernote OCRs and then keeps the index when I later put it to local, that's a good enough solution for me.

 

I will post back on how it works.