Can I edit a form like this and make it writable?

[DGehman]

My lagging-edge Omnipage 14 plain vanilla (which Scansoft's brilliant marketing dept calls "Pro") does an excellent job of OCR and formatting on PDF forms. Below left, the OCR result in Msoft Word. Right, the original.

RonDuke, most OCR packages have options to preserve formatting - have you checked to see if that option is enabled?

[Ron Duke]

i got a email flyer from the makers of Omnipage ( a OCR software company) they have a product that is supposed to do that also. If ya want, I can forward you the email...

Sure, I'll give it a try, thanks John.

Albacore: "Ron what version of word or open office have you got? as some you can import the PDF table in. If it was me that was doing it I would just copy straight it into word making your own table thats not going to take long so long as you know a bit about tables."

I use Microsoft Word 2003 (11.8134.8132) SP2. I don't see an import option though. Under "Insert" I don't see anything that relates to your suggestion.

thanks,
ron

[Ron Duke]

My lagging-edge Omnipage 14 plain vanilla (which Scansoft's brilliant marketing dept calls "Pro") does an excellent job of OCR and formatting on PDF forms. Below left, the OCR result in Msoft Word. Right, the original.

RonDuke, most OCR packages have options to preserve formatting - have you checked to see if that option is enabled?

Man! That software is expensive!

ron

[DGehman]

You must be thinking of Omnipage 16.

The time has passed, but last month, Serif offered Omnipage 14 Pro for $13 including shipping from the UK... note that in my post, I said "lagging edge Omnipage 14."

The cool thing is that aside from more direct PDF reading (one step less) and a passel of new features useless to me (PaperPort sucks), the recognition engine is 99% the same between 16 and 14.

EDIT: I see Serif is now offering OP 14 for $40 + S&H, http://www.serif.com/SerifExtra/Temp...ct/97/61/1.htm -- not $14, but not $500 either...

[Ron Duke]

DGheman,
Does this software allow you to create fillable fields OR can it save the fillable fields when converting to pdf? I can't see in the web page whether or not it can do this.
ron

[raynerj1]

I forwarded the email to the email I last corresponded with you at. The ronsautoart one at juno...

For the price they quote, you are supposed to get omnipage 16, paperport 11, pdf create 4 and media Recover... The price isn't that bad at $99... but I think you are mainly interested in the PDF create 4. I think that retails for about $50...

Let me know if this helped any.

[DGehman]

DGheman,
Does this software allow you to create fillable fields OR can it save the fillable fields when converting to pdf? I can't see in the web page whether or not it can do this.
ron

Hmm, I didn't follow up in detail...

It turns out, when it came into Word 2002, the fields were Text Boxes. Most behaved OK, but for the smaller ones, I had to go into insert (overtype) mode, where the character you type takes the place of the character under the cursor... otherwise, the text box expanded and threw the layout off.

Also, while you can tab to the next text box, Word highlights the prompts (for example, "SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER:"), so I had to right-arrow, then begin typing. Otherwise the prompt would have evaporated.

Word 2002 doesn't have a built-in PDF save, so I use PDF995, which operates like a printer. You "print" to PDF995, but in the process, up comes a save dialog allowing you to place the resulting PDF in the folder of your choice.

I see by the printout that PDF995 doesn't capture the bottom border. For Massachusetts, I'd whip out my pen and draw a line, because who knows? a missing line where a state employee expects one could delay processing. And my screen capture snagged the + magnifying glass cursor in Adobe over my last name... gotta remember to turn off the "include cursor in capture" option. But that's only in the screen capture below, not in the PDF.

So, it ain't perfect. But at least I can fill it out such that anyone could read it... which would not be possible had I filled it out by hand.

EDIT:
While I was doing this, John was suggesting a separate utility. That might be the best option, if it allows you to edit the original PDF...

[Ron Duke]

John and DGehman,
Thanks to both. John, I don't use that email anymore. My current one is linked to my profile.

I tried the PDFTypewriter demo and it seems to work well. It's $50.00. Pretty easy to use too. Think I might go with that one.

thanks,
ron

[DGehman]

Probably the best thing. I have a recurring need for OCR and needed to update my previous package, Finereader Pro 6 (2002), which was good, but not nearly as good as OP 14 (2004) is turning out to be.

[David O'Neil]

If you can open the original PDF in Xara (or a high-res bitmap of the form), you could just make a correction layer (white squares with texts/lines/objects on top of it) to change the field headings/whatever else you need changed. Lock that layer, and create a layer with texts and 'X's that will be changed or moved (i.e., 'yes' - 'no' check boxes, name fields, etc...). Then you could do all the editing in Xara if you wanted.

The other methods probably have more power to them in the long run, but I thought I'd mention the above possibility, as it would work without spending anything else (if you can open it in Xara, that is).