ScanSnap workflow - "Scan to Evernote" tool blocks/hangs while doing OCR

[pix0r 0]

I just purchased a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500M to use with Evernote on my mac. Once I got everything installed and set up, I tried scanning some documents, and had one major annoyance: "Scan to Evernote" (the seemingly Fujitsu-supplied helper program) spends a lot of time doing OCR on the scanned images, and won't let you scan a new document until the OCR process has finished. For a 10-page document, the OCR process is taking me about a minute, even though the scan takes a fraction of that time.

Does anyone know (a) if there's a solution or workaround for this problem, or who to contact to try to get in touch with the application developer? I'd be happy to poke around at the source code if it was publicly available but I don't think that's the case.

Maybe a better solution would be somehow setting up a "watch folder" and pulling PDF's from the filesystem rather than using the ScanSnap Evernote integration tool? (haven't yet researched but I assume this is possible)

[jbenson2 2,147]

In my ScanSnap Manager (for Windows), the 4th tab is "File Option" and there is a check box to toggle on and off the Searchable PDF (OCRs during scan).

[anjoschu 67]

I agree with pix0r, I would love to see a workaround where I could quickly scan documents one after the other and OCR would work through the queued PDFs in the background.

From a different thread:

So given where we are, I'd be remiss if i didn't mention that Evernote Premium will OCR your PDFs for you when you upload them, but I assume what you are wanting is to have the actual PDF OCRed independently of Evernote.

If you are on a Mac, you can drag the PDF onto the ABBYY FineReader icon in the Finder. I am on my iPad so this is from memory, but I believe it is under /Applications/ScanSnap/Scan to Searchable PDF or something like that.

If you are on Windows, I don't think that works, but what you can do is throw your ScanSnap-scanned PDFs into the ScanSnap Organizer software that came with your scanner. It can then OCR them for you.

There are of course a zillion other applications that will do this for you, but I am just pointing out some ways to do it with the software that came with your scanner.

If only this was possible. Alas, at least on my machine (also Mac with ScanSnap), there's no such app where I could drag the PDF(s) onto (or to which I could feed the PDFs via an applescript folder action).

Anyone any ideas?

[Enrico 1]

Maybe this is helpful for you guys...I found this workflow successful for my needs.

I switched off the automatic OCR in ScanSnap, so I can scan documents one after the other very fast. These all get stored in a folder "To be sorted".

Then, I created a search in Finder (I am on a Mac). I don't have the exact specs handy, but you need to look at the "Creator" of the file. You will see that Scansnap will put its name as the Creator, but after you send the file through OCR that field is changed.

I then save the search and drag it to the left of the finder window. I called it "PDF to OCR"

So, when I know that I have scanned a few items and I want to OCR them, I just click on "PDF to OCR", it shows me the list of all PDFs that were scanned, but not yet OCR'd. Then I drag the bunch of files and drop them on the FineReader icon on my dock. I generally do that before I go to bed and let the Mac run.

Remember to set FineReader to OCR the file and save it with the same name, otherwise you will end up with a lot of duplicates.

[pgdahl 133]

I also have a S1500 - although using Mac, I got the Windows version and saved a chunk of cash - and I do something similar to Enrico, except I use PDFpen. An added benefit is that PDFpen supports more languages than the built in OCR on ScanSnap.