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General discussion

Third party OCR for CanoScan?

Dec 30, 2010 6:55AM PST

I have a CanonScan LIDE 200 which does exceptionally well in what I ude it for. I recently upgraded to a 64 bit Dell Optiplex and Windows 7. Windows alerted me to possible compatibility issues. I have not had any ... until I tried OCR. The Scanner's manual says OCR can only be opened with Notepad that comes with Windows. For me, that is a pain in the neck. So myb question is, can I link other OCR software and persuade the scanner to use that Software? I have in mind to use the OCR and simpy copy to the cliboard, then paste into MS Word. That used to work when I had Windows XP and Office 2003, using the same scanner! THis seems to be a Canon issue not a Windows issue. I do not find any support for this scanner on the Canon site.

Discussion is locked

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OCR software
Dec 31, 2010 12:15AM PST

There are several OCR software packages on the market, some can cost as much or more than the scanner that you have. There are canon driver upgrades online unless you have done that already I would suggest doing that since you are using Win 7. Doing the driver upgrade should help functionality but I see nothing alluding to OCR. There are some free OCR downloads also, that is a possibility and may be worth a try. Meanwhile I would upgrade the drivers from Canon's site.

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Third party, open party, party virtually and more.
Dec 31, 2010 12:35AM PST

Since I find more scanners with no driver support at all I gave myself a day to think this over for a different approach.

We know VIRTUAL BOX lets us install UBUNTU in that virtual machine with lots of other benefits so what I needed was a good article about using SANE with the scanners and OCR.

Here it is -> http://www.howtoforge.com/ocr_with_tesseract_on_ubuntu704

Even if you don't use TESSERACT you should read about how to scan for best results.

Bob

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Third party OCR
Dec 31, 2010 3:34AM PST

Thank you for your response. Our IT people did install the Win 7 Driver/s for the scanner. Before that, when the PC had Windows XP, the scanner opened Omniscan SE and some text editor, which worked for me. Now that I think back, that Omniscan came with the HP scanner I had before, and was not removed when the HP died. It may just be that if I reinstall the HP along with its bundled software that I can again 'talk the Canon" into using it even in Win 7. Uuhm. (The disappointmnet with a $650 HP over a $65 Canon is another story, but isn't relevant here.)

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TESSERACT, LIDE 200 and so on
Dec 31, 2010 3:41AM PST

Since the scanner is at my office I will have to ask our IT people to look at these options. My scanning and OCR needs are at a little higher than entry level, and that CanonScan $65 with its entry level bundled software beats other scanners needing additional (expensive) software by miles. I had a $100 CanonScan 80 that went seamless from Win 98 to XP to Vista, while a $650 High Priced scanner could not!