Importing scanned data

[Jack Sheet]

Hi all

I have a substantial quantity of tabulated data presented in JPEG format
from scanned hard copies.
The data is typed and "clean".
Is there a freebie utility out there that will "OCR" this data into .xls
format? I appreciate that it will then need careful checking, but it would
still be a lot quicker than typing it all in.

Thanks

 

[Jack Sheet]

OK it was probably asking a bit much to find a free converter. Anyone know
of a good value one?

 

[Gord Dibben]

Jack

The OCR application is employed at the time of scanning the data and creates a
*.txt file or scans directly to a word processing Application like MS Word.

The scanner most always comes with the OCR program.

You cannot "convert" a jpeg to a a text file that Excel could read.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

OK it was probably asking a bit much to find a free converter. Anyone know
of a good value one?

 

[Dave Peterson]

I try http://www.shareware.com
and then search for OCR.

Maybe you can find something listed in:
http://lists.thedatalist.com/

 

[MyVeryOwnSelf]

I have a substantial quantity of tabulated data presented in JPEG

The scanner most always comes with the OCR program.

You cannot "convert" a jpeg to a a text file that Excel could read.

I did an experiment.

Starting with an Excel file containing a rectangular table of random
numbers, I did:

<Alt-Print Screen>

Paste the image into the "Paint" program

Trim off the extraneous stuff in Paint.

Print from Paint to MS-Office ImageWriter. (To replicate OP's situation, I
could've started with a jpeg file and printed to ImageWriter.)

In the resulting "Imaging" window, use
Tools >> Send text to Word
This made an MS-Word document containing a table.

Copy the table and paste it back into a new blank Excel document.

In this round-about round trip, only about 80% of the numbers were correct.
The problems were primarily recognizing the decimal point. Sometimes it was
omitted; other times, a digit next to the decimal point was turned into a
letter.

Draw your own conclusions. My conclusion is not to rely on ImageWriter's
OCR for numerical data. Maybe other OCR programs would be better.

 

[Jack Sheet]

Gord

Thanks, but I don't have the scanner, I am only presented with the scanned
data, and this is in jpg format. So at the moment I have no OCR capability
at all, except as suggested by MyVeryOwnSelf (which I have not tried yet).

I will look around.

Jack

The OCR application is employed at the time of scanning the data and
creates a
*.txt file or scans directly to a word processing Application like MS
Word.

The scanner most always comes with the OCR program.

You cannot "convert" a jpeg to a a text file that Excel could read.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

 

[Jack Sheet]

Thanks for the links

I try http://www.shareware.com
and then search for OCR.

Maybe you can find something listed in:
http://lists.thedatalist.com/

 

[Jack Sheet]

Thanks for the attempt. I will give it a try.

I did an experiment.

Starting with an Excel file containing a rectangular table of random
numbers, I did:

<Alt-Print Screen>

Paste the image into the "Paint" program

Trim off the extraneous stuff in Paint.

Print from Paint to MS-Office ImageWriter. (To replicate OP's situation, I
could've started with a jpeg file and printed to ImageWriter.)

In the resulting "Imaging" window, use
Tools >> Send text to Word
This made an MS-Word document containing a table.

Copy the table and paste it back into a new blank Excel document.

In this round-about round trip, only about 80% of the numbers were
correct.
The problems were primarily recognizing the decimal point. Sometimes it
was
omitted; other times, a digit next to the decimal point was turned into a
letter.

Draw your own conclusions. My conclusion is not to rely on ImageWriter's
OCR for numerical data. Maybe other OCR programs would be better.