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(Archived) Questions about search in pdfs / photos and handwriting


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Posted

Hello there!

 

I just got my first EN premium subscription and I am on the one hand very satisfied with the document seach, but on the other hand some things don't work out the way I imagined they would.

 

1. Is there any guide to handwritten notes, like "how to write" blockletters for instance to help the servers to identify your handwriting? For instance a normal "i" is not recognized and I don't know why. Is there a guide on how to write so that chances are higher your hand written notes are searchable?

 

2. For taking photos of receipts for instance: Is it better to use the Evernote iOS app (camera function within the app) or a third party app like a scanner app which saves the receips as pdf's and sends them to EN?

 

When I try to search for receipts some words found in photos taken with the Evernote iOS app are marked in yellow, but the same receipt scanned with a scanner app and saved as a pdf is not marked and doesn't always show up in search. And again I have no idea why!?

 

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I hope you understand what my problems are?

Anyway take care and all the best!

 

Oh and thanks for any help :)

  • Level 5*
Posted

There are no guides that I'm aware of on writing style.  Handwriting is such a mess that it's a miracle that any sense can be extracted from it at all.  Yes it's better to use a scanner than a camera.  You can improve PDF OCRs by doing them yourself rather than leaving Evernote to deal with them.

Posted

Thanks!

 

The thing is that in the orginal photos taken with the Evernote iOS app words searched for are marked in yellow, but in PDF files nothing is marked at all. So I was wondering if this feature only works with EN app photos or (somehow) with PDFs as well?

Posted

I'll second Gazumped's comments.  In fact I have got to the point where I view the text-image search to be more of an interesting novelty in Evernote rather than a tool that I depend on unless all else fails.  

 

For example, I was looking for a imaged business card for a business on Waterloo Road.  Couldn't remember the exact name, but knew it was on Waterloo and that I had their card so I did a general search in my Bizcard notebook on "Waterloo"

 

This is one of the images that came up - its a scan of a business card that had been scanned but had got skewed on the scanner bed. Evernote still found the word "Waterloo" in the image. 

 

Here is the card I was actually looking for in this case.  It is straight and clear, but Evernote has never been able to find the word "Waterloo".  Don't know if its a text size issue, font issue or what. 

 

As far as handwriting goes, I have never seen it work on cursive, but have seen it work on some pretty poor printing. I used to try and write as neat as I could to facilitate this search capability, but it didn't seem to make that much difference.  

 

Oh, its only in JPEG (and PNG?) that Evernote highlites the found text.  Not so in PDFs. 

 

Don't get me wrong, I dump images a lot into Evernote.  I prefer to take notes in meetings and phone calls using pen and paper (I'm old - what can I say).  But an image of those notes are dumped into Evernote. Either using my cell phone camera or a scanner.  Personally I take the images on the phone (Samsung Galaxy S3) using Pixlr Express so I can do some editing if necessary - cropping, adjust brightness and contrast, etc.  Also CamScanner does a good job to create multi page PDFs. But rather than rely on text-image search to find stuff, I follow the lead of GrumpyMonkey and use descriptive titles with dates and keywords in the body of the note (not the image). 

 

 

Posted

Thanks for the answer.

So I guess I should see EN the way you do, but I still like the idea of finding text in images and documents. Especially because I prefer taking notes with pen and paper as well, but like to search my notes as well (well kinda). Anyway thanks!

  • Level 5*
Posted

Thanks for the answer.

So I guess I should see EN the way you do, but I still like the idea of finding text in images and documents. Especially because I prefer taking notes with pen and paper as well, but like to search my notes as well (well kinda). Anyway thanks!

 

Not sure what you're wanting here,  but I have tons of handwritten notes in Evernote - sometimes they're found,  sometimes they're not.  I don't expect the app to spoon feed me hits though - if I don't find the notes I need on a search I'll look for the date or the title - "notes from project meeting" or whatever - and then find the stuff I need from the very short list of notes that appears.  If that piece is of interest,  I'll tag it or retitle it so its easier to find next time.  That's not an OCR issue,  it's just ongoing database maintenance.

Posted

 

 

Oh, its only in JPEG (and PNG?) that Evernote highlites the found text.  Not so in PDFs. 

 

 

 

Hmmm? Evernote finds and highlights text in my PDFs all the time (well, most of the time). I'm using the Windows client.

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