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Cannot search text in photos


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I have just started using Evernote free on iOS 8.2 on iPhone 5s and iPad 3. I have created notes by using the iPhone camera from within the Evernote app to photograph documents with text which has come out clearly in the photos. However, when I try to search for words found in the documents, the documents do not show up in the search results. Only text in the note titles are found. Similarly, I have a note with a PDF document attached and this does not show up when searching for words contained within it (although Evernote will find words when the PDF itself is opened). I have waited for over 24 hours to allow for any Evernote server processing required. I had read that this should be possible without Evernote Premium. Could anyone help?

Many thanks

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  • Level 5*

Hi.  What file type are your pictures - JPG?  PNG?  If your PDF is searchable when saved it should be added to your index automatically.  OCR-ing and searching a picture PDF is not covered by the free app - you'd need to get the premium version for that.

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Hi Gazumped, thanks for your quick response. I assume that all my photos are JPG as I believe that this is what the iPhone produces when using its standard camera app, although I have been using the camera option from within Evernote so I am not sure what this produces. One would assume that it produces a format that would allow text searching. Is this an issue and how do I get around this?

The PDF file is searchable when I am viewing the note to which it is attached so it would not seem to be a picture PDF, so it is puzzling why it cannot be picked up on a search of all the notes. Are you able to suggest what I might be doing incorrectly?

Many thanks

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  • Level 5*

Hi again - sorry to take a while to come back..

 

If you're using the document camera via Evernote,  that's designed to generate a PDF file from the content (you might want to copy more than one page,  and JPG files don't do that..).  So it'll be searchable only in the Premium version.  If you need to produce JPG files,  use the device camera to take pictures and go to your gallery to share those pictures to Evernote for OCR.

 

PDF files are human-readable when displayed,  but not necessarily indexed and OCR'd.

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Hi Gazumped, thanks for coming back. I have tried as you suggested by using the iPhone camera app to take the photo and then putting this into Evernote but unfortunately the text is still not showing up in searches, even after allowing overnight for Evernote to process the image. As a test I have also tried searching for ordinary text typed straight into the main body of a note and found that this does not show up in a seach either, so the problem seems even more fundamental. Only the text in the title of notes seems to be found in searches. So I don't know if I am doing something wrong or if Evernote have made severe restrictions on the capability of Evernote free for iPhone. Do you have any further thoughts?

Many thanks for your help so far.

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