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OCR process appears to run but I do not see evidence it completed

2024-09-02
2024-09-02
  • John Grissett

    John Grissett - 2024-09-02

    I am a new user of NAPS2 running version 7.5.1.0. So far I have been pleased with what I see. I am attempting to utilize the OCR feature with my Brother MFC-7460DN multifunction device. It appears to play nicely so far using both WIA and TWAIN.

    My puzzle is when I go to scan a document using anywhere from 200dpi to 400dpi, the OCR process does not seem to be working. I see the OCR process is taking place is indicated by the status window in the lower right (of the app) that appears. But when I save the PDF file, there does not appear to be any selectable text. I have tried changing the settings to fix the white balance and enabling / disabling pre-emptive OCR run.

    I am running on a Windows 11 system. Adobe reader / Adobe anything is NOT installed. Only attempting to view the resulting PDFs through Edge. I have also saved a fairly uncluttered web page to PDF and attempted to have NAPS2 run OCR against the PDF by re-saving as a new PDF.

    I tried enabling the debug logs but I didn't find them right away. The logs I did find were a couple of days old. Any suggestions?

     
  • Ben Olden-Cooligan

    Do you have an example PDF you can attach?

     
  • John Grissett

    John Grissett - 2024-09-02

    Sure, 2 examples of the same(ish) thing. One with 2 pages scanned at 200dpi and "Fix white balance..." turned off and "pre-emptive OCR" turned on. The second scanned at 400dpi, single page with "Fix white balance..." turned on and "pre-emptive OCR" turned off.

     
  • Ben Olden-Cooligan

    Both of those look like they have text to me. Sounds like an issue with your PDF viewer, Firefox/Chrome/Adobe all show it for me when I press Ctrl+A.

     
  • John Grissett

    John Grissett - 2024-09-02

    Your reply gave me an idea for something to search on. I found a solution for not being able to select text within Edge as a PDF viewer.

    1. In the address bar, enter "Edge://flags" on the page that appears, use the search and enter PDF.
    2. Scroll down in the PDF results that appear and look for "New PDF Viewer".
    3. Set the dropdown from Default or Enabled to Disabled.
    4. Click the Restart button that appears to apply and restart the browser.

    I found these steps in the MicrosoftEdge Reddit group. After making the change, I was able to select text as expected. I did note that in my testing, PDFs that I downloaded such as the "NMEA Reference Manual-Rev2.1-Dec07.pdf" or some inoices I received were selectable even before I made this change. I have not dug into the PDFs themselves to see what makes them different.

    Thank you for your help. I hope the steps above prove of use to someone as well...

     

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