[JoeKissell]

mbookspan said:

Everyone - this might seem like a stupid question - but why OCR each scan? Do you need to edit the text? I have been moving to a paperless office myself and have not been OCR'ing unless there is a real need to get access to the content itself. Please provide some insights.

In a word: searching! I explained this in the original article, The Real Paperless Office - the main reason for OCR is so that you can search your scanned content. In other words, it puts scanned documents on a par with all the other documents on your computer, making their contents visible to Spotlight (or whatever search tool you prefer). Secondarily, it lets you copy and paste text from scanned documents, something I've found extremely useful on numerous occasions.

Joe

[rpoland]

It may not matter to everyone but size matters.

A typical scan is 30Mb and the same OCR'ed is around 30Kb.

[mbookspan]

Joe - thanks for replying. I can see that for some docs (Tax receipts need to be intact, for example). I also like the idea of smaller file sizes. Either way, I appreciate the information. Very well written article. I use a Canon MX7600 + ReadIris for my paperless office. Also, thanks for the ReadIris 11.6.3 upgrade info - I emailed the folks there and am awaiting the update link.

[mbookspan]

One other note everyone - ReadIRIS Pro is now at version 11.6.6. Please contact their support team for an update.

[joej]

Hi - I am trying to get the scripts to work but am having trouble (using Acrobat 7 standard, with "OCR This (Acrobat).scpt"). I have followed the steps in the two articles. Here are some of the Console entries that occured when I dropped a PDF into the folder that had "OCR This (Acrobat)" folder action enabled:
12/19/08 3:16:28 PM [0x0-0x82082].com.adobe.Acrobat[518] 081219 15:16:28 /Users/myusername/Applications/Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Standard/Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Standard.app/Contents/MacOS/mysqld: Normal shutdown
12/19/08 3:16:29 PM [0x0-0x82082].com.adobe.Acrobat 081219 15:16:29 Aborted connection 2 to db: 'unconnected' user: 'myusername' host: `localhost' (Got an error reading communication packets)
12/19/08 3:16:29 PM [0x0-0x82082].com.adobe.Acrobat 081219 15:16:29 Aborted connection 1 to db: 'unconnected' user: 'myusername' host: `localhost' (Got an error reading communication packets)
Another time:
12/20/08 10:43:09 PM com.apple.launchd[142] (com.apple.FolderActions.folders) Throttling respawn: Will start in 6 seconds
I read in the Apple forums and deleted:
com.apple.FolderActions.enabled.plist
com.apple.FolderActions.folders.plist
from myusername/Library/LaunchAgents followed by logging out and then in again. I then re-attached all the scripts.
The Readaris script starts sometimes, the Acrobat scripts never start.
Any ideas?

[JoeKissell]

joej said:

Hi - I am trying to get the scripts to work but am having trouble (using Acrobat 7 standard, with "OCR This (Acrobat).scpt"). I have followed the steps in the two articles. Here are some of the Console entries that occured when I dropped a PDF into the folder that had "OCR This (Acrobat)" folder action enabled:

...

Quote

from myusername/Library/LaunchAgents followed by logging out and then in again. I then re-attached all the scripts.

I'm not familiar with the Console messages you mentioned, so I can't say whether Acrobat is doing something strange. From your statement "I then re-attached all the scripts," I'm wondering if you have more than one folder action script attached to the folder at the same time. If so, that could be your problem - make sure only one script is attached to the folder you're watching. Also, verify that you can manually open a file in Acrobat Standard and successfully do the OCR. If both of those things are true and the script still doesn't work, let me know, and I'll see what else I can come up with.

Joe

[joej]

Thanks for your help. Yes, I have only one script per folder. And, yes, I can open a file in Acrobat 7 and do OCR.

[JoeKissell]

joej said:

Thanks for your help. Yes, I have only one script per folder. And, yes, I can open a file in Acrobat 7 and do OCR.

OK, just send me a private email and we'll figure out what's going on. Then, if we learn anything that would be useful for other people to know, we'll post the results here.

Joe

[sestreicher]

To syclone171:

I am still having the same problem you had with scanning multiple pages. Can you please explain in a cookbook fashion how to fix the problem? i read your fix, but I don't understand it. What does it mean when you say you had
"both Acrobat scripts attached to the same folder'. Both what?? I can't figure it out. Can you help me?

thanks
sestreicher

[MarkusPletscher]

Great work! But I do have a question, please excuse if I'm just too stupid for this. If so, just tell me, hehe.
It all works beautifully the only thing that bugs me with the direct save is that the file size is not reduced. With the save as it's perfect. Is there something I'm doing wrong?
Thanks
Markus