OCR to MS Word to InDesign

[Luca del Carlo]

What would be an optimal way to transfer an OCR'd (optical character
recognition) piece, in this case an entire book, into MS Word, retaining
formatting? I'm beginning with Abbyy FIneReader OCR which allows you to scan
into MS Word. Ultimately the MS Word doc will be transferred into InDesign
for final layout, so the Word doc should be compatible with ID. Sorry if this
question crosses over too many other programs, but the MS Word phase is
relevant.

I'd like to maintain all the original formatting, only changing the font.

Thanks!
Luca

Luca

 

[Robert M. Franz [RMF]]

Ciao Luca

What would be an optimal way to transfer an OCR'd (optical character
recognition) piece, in this case an entire book, into MS Word, retaining
formatting? I'm beginning with Abbyy FIneReader OCR which allows you to scan
into MS Word. Ultimately the MS Word doc will be transferred into InDesign
for final layout, so the Word doc should be compatible with ID. Sorry if this
question crosses over too many other programs, but the MS Word phase is
relevant.

I'd like to maintain all the original formatting, only changing the font.

very tough approach IMHO: there's no clean way to even import from a
Scan into Word without minor changes (rather: you would be very lucky if
you don't get different line endings and hence different pagination
there to begin with). Same goes for Word >> ID.

And even if you'd start with the original file (before the paper or PDF
you are going to scan has been produced), changing font in itself, in
general, means different lines and hence pagination. Unless you're
talking about a fixed-width font (like Courier), each letter has a
different width, and I wouldn't know two fonts that match letter widths
for the whole alphabet ...

HTH
Robert