How to export indexed data in to a database?

There are a variety of ways to connect to your database. SimpleIndex offers you different options for exporting into your type of database.  Detailed instructions are provided in the Manual (check the Help menu).

Disable StopFile

If you have many different users running SimpleIndex on different computers saving to the same Output folder, the STOPFILE from one can cause another user to not be able to export to the folder while the original user is outputting to the folder. In this case the STOPFILE can be disabled, so this no longer happens.

This will not work if you have anyone that needs to add files to an existing file in the output folder, so make sure that won’t happen.

Instructions:

  1. Close SimpleIndex entirely
  2. Open the Windows Registry by going to the Windows Search and searching for “RegEdit”
  3. Go to this location in the Registry Folder Tree: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\SimpleIndex\Misc
  4. In the right section of the Registry window Right Click in the white space and select New>String Value
  5. Name the new key “StopFile”
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Create Unique Batch Name

SimpleIndex creates a Batch ID each time you run a SimpleIndex Job Configuration, which creates a new batch.

The Batch ID is the Date and Time that the batch was started.
EX. 2020-01-23@145419

In this example 2020 is the Year, 01 is the Month, 23 is the Day, 14 is the Hour, 54 is the Second and 19 is the Millisecond that the batch was started.

When running SimpleIndex as a Windows Service using the Server Add-on or using the Windows Task Scheduler you can set-up multiple Job Configurations to run on different time frames and have them all running at once. This can lead to a very small possibility that two different Job Configurations will start at the same Millisecond, especially when the Job Configurations are set to run on the same time frames. This can lead to errors or missing files during the process.

With the following option you can make every batch name unique in case there are multiple batches that are created at the exact same Millisecond, which can occur with multi-thread processing on the same Input folder.

Instructions for Unique Batch Name:

  1. Open the Windows Registry Editor by searching for “regedit”
  2. Find this location in the Registry Editor:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\SimpleIndex\Misc
  3. Right click in the right and select New>String Value
  4. Name the key the following: GUIDBatchNames
  5. Open the key and set the value to the following: 1
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Using alternate database schemas

In SQL Server, Oracle and MySQL (among others) user logons are associated with a default “schema” that determines which tables and views they can see.

Users may have access to other tables and views that aren’t in their schema. When connecting to the database these tables will show up in the list, but when you try to get the list of fields you get an “Invalid object reference” error.

To reference these tables, use [Schema].[Table] for the table name to explicitly reference the table.

You can also change the user’s default schema on the server to the one matching the table.

A third option is to create a view under the user’s default schema that selects the necessary records.

At the present time you cannot enter [Schema].[Table] in the wizard, so if you need to use this workaround configure the job in the wizard and modify the table name in the old job options screen.

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Access Database Connection String

If you would like to create a database string for an Access database that includes a password use this format:

Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=path\database.mdb;Jet OLEDB:Database Password=db_password;

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MISSING file move with multiple files

​If you want to move the MISSING files from the Output folder to another folder and create multiple MISSING files then use this script for the .bat file:

ren “C:\Users\dgraves.META\Desktop\Folder1\Missing.pdf” Missing-%date:~10,4%%date:~7,2%%date:~4,2%_%time:~0,2%%time:~3,2%.PDF 

Move “C:\Users\dgraves.META\Desktop\Folder1\Missing*.pdf” “C:\Users\dgraves.META\Desktop\Folder2”

This will rename the file to MISSING-DATE_TIME and then move it to another folder.

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How do I export index data to a database?

There are a variety of ways to connect to your database. Detailed instructions are provided in the Manual (check the Help menu). Here is a brief overview of the steps involved:

-Create a job configuration to scan and index files
-On the database tab, set the “Database Mode” to “Insert New Records”
-To use ODBC, enter the data source name or file in Data Source
-To connect directly, select your database type under “Select a Data Source” and click Start. A series of dialogs will prompt you for database connection information.
-Select destination Table or View and click Reload
-For each index field, select the corresponding database field that will receive that field value
-The “Output File Field” will receive the path to the exported file

Once you have created records in your database in “Insert” mode, you can change to “Retrieve and View Records” and use SimpleIndex or SimpleSearch to search and view the files.

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SimpleIndex creates output files with upper case file extensions but we use an UNIX-based fileserver which requires lower case file extensions. How can i change the output file extension from upper case to lower case (e.g. from .PDF to .pdf)?

In SimpleIndex 6, file extensions were changed to default to lower case so this should no longer be an issue. If you want to default back to upper case file extensions, you must edit the registry.

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\SimpleIndex\Misc

Create a String value called “UpperCaseFileExtension” and set to 1 for upper case or 0 for lower case.

This registry setting will also work to change the default behavior of version 5.

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Is it possible to have the scanned image itself added to a database and not just the image path?

Yes. Image files can be inserted into binary fields in Access, SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL and other databases.

Check the “Store files as binary objects” option on the Database tab and the “Output File Field” setting can be mapped to a binary field.

If using PDF, MS Office or other non-image files, use the File Type Field to store the file extension of the stored file.

SimpleSearch mode will let you view files stored using this method as well.

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When exporting to a database, I get the error “Multi-step operation generated errors”

This error is usually caused when the data you are trying to insert does not match the data type of the database field. This could be a text value being inserted into a number or date field, or a text value that is longer than the maximum length of the field.

To avoid this error, be sure to use the correct Field Type and/or Template on the Index tab to force the user to enter data in the correct format. You may also need to adjust the data types or lengths for your database fields.

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How do you configure a field to select from a list of possible values?

List fields are populated using a text file or database field containing the values for that list. The text file scenario will be described first.

To configure a list field, go to the Index tab in the Job Options. Create a list field by selecting “List” for the field type and give it a name. In the “List File/Field” setting for this field, put the full path or UNC to the text file containing the list or click “Set” to browse to the file. If you have not created a file, you can put the path where you want the file stored here and click the “Edit” button. This will open the file in Notepad; new files will prompt you to create them.

On each line of the text file you will put one of the possible values that you want to be able to select from while you are indexing with SimpleIndex. You can copy this information from another source and paste it into the text file.
Save the file in Notepad and close it. The List field is now configured!

To use a database field, your configuration must be connected to a database using the settings on the Database tab. Any fields defined as “List” on the Index tab that have a corresponding field mapped on the Database tab will use the unique values from that field to populate the list.

You can check “Only allow values in list” to disallow users from entering a value not in the list.

Once the List index field is configured properly you can select the values from a drop down after scanning that appear in the main SimpleIndex window while indexing. It also makes the field autofill the closest match from the list based on the characters that you type in that field.

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Is it possible to restrict user access to certain documents in Retrieval Mode?

If the database you use to store index information has security access features, you can use these to manage access to documents with SimpleIndex retrieval mode.

In your database, create user accounts and groups and assign them the appropriate permissions to records in your document database.

In SimpleIndex, check the “Require Logon” option on the Logging tab to force the user to logon to the database using the accounts you created. When they search and view documents, they will only be able to access records that the corresponding database user has been assigned access to.

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How do you configure full text searching in Retrieval mode?

On the Database tab there dropdown in the lower portion of the panel for Full Text OCR Field. Put the name of the field that will store the full-text data there. This must be configured both for Insert and Retrieval mode configurations. The database field needs to be sufficient length to store the entire text of your document.

Of course, the Insert Mode configuration must have “Enable Full Page OCR” checked to generate full text data from images. Text from MS Office documents, PDF files and existing OCR text files can be used without setting this option.

When designing your Retrieval Mode configuration, create a Text field to use for full text search queries. On the Database tab, set the corresponding “Database Field Name” to the full text database field.

When searching on your full text field, SimpleIndex finds the text you enter no matter where it appears in the document. It is able to match partial words. It does not perform boolean or natural language searches. The text entered must match the document text exactly.

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What is “Match & Attach” mode?

Match & Attach mode lets you batch update multiple records in a database using the index data from your SimpleIndex job. For example, if you have a large backfile of documents that you want to scan and link to records in an existing database, you can use Match & Attach to find the corresponding record and set the Image Path field to the newly scanned file.

For details on how to configure Match & Attach mode, please refer to the manual.

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How do you configure the Autofill feature?

The Autofill feature of SimpleIndex is an easy way to associate many index fields with one document without retyping data that already exists in another application.

Autofill uses a database lookup to retrieve records that match a key value or values entered by the user or extracted with SimpleIndex. Blank index fields are then filled in automatically with the data from this lookup. The result is a document database with many different possible search fields, of which only one needed to be entered during scanning.

You can use one, two or three index fields as the key values to extract data from your data source.  These index fields can be any of the various types of manual and automatic fields.  Once the fields are matched the lookup information will get filled in to the Autofill Index fields.

Instructions

  1. Navigate to the Indexing & File Naming step in the Job Options Wizard under the File menu.
  2. Create an Index field(s) in SimpleIndex that will be used for the key matching value(s), which will pull the information from the database.  This Index field can be any Type other than Autofill.
  3. Click the “Autofill Settings…” button on the top right.
  4. Select the “Datasource:” configured in the Database step in the drop down or click the “New Data Source…” button to create a new connection.
  5. Click the Load button, which loads the data from the database.
  6. Select the Table or View that the data is in in the “Table or View:” drop down.
  7. Select the key field from the database that will be used to match against to pull the other data from the other columns in the selected Table or View from the “Database Key Field 1:” drop down.  If other index fields are required for matching the correct records select these in “Database Key Field 2:” and “Database Key Field 3:”
  8. Select the key index field from SimpleIndex that will be entered or extracted and used to match against the database in the “Index Key Field 1:” drop down.  If other index fields are required for matching the correct records select these in the “Index Key Field 2:” and “Index Key Field 2:”, making sure that the correct SimpleIndex fields are linked to the correct database columns.
  9. Click Finish
  10. Create new Autofill index fields for each piece of additional data needed to be filled in based on the key field(s).  The Template for each of the Autofill index fields should be the exact name of the column from the data source that should be filled.

By checking the “Allow manual input in Autofill fields” the users can edit the filled data manually.  By checking “Automatically select first matching record” it will select the first record in the table that matches instead of asking which record should be used, when multiple records in the data source have the same data.  By checking “Match on single Key Field” it will match on just one of the key fields, instead of requiring all key fields be match, when multiple key matching fields are used.  By checking “Cascading List Mode” each autofill field is displayed as a drop down list populated by the records that match the key field(s) and each selection filters the next list for matching values.

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How can I configure SimpleIndex to perform bates stamping or page numbering for my images?

This is all done through the electronic imprinting features, which puts the desired information electronically on the output images that are saved in your output folder. This is all done in SimpleIndex by clicking going to the File menu, selecting Job Settings Wizard and then going to the Imprinting step.

To implement bates stamping or page numbering click the ‘Enable Imprinting’ check box and also the ‘Imprint page numbers’ check box. This is the most basic method, but there are also features which allow you to manipulate what this information is, what it looks like and where on the page it will go.

The ‘Font Size’ field allows you to choose what point font you would like the imprinted value to be.

The ‘Page # Length’ lets you determine how many digits you would like the page number or bates number to be. It will add leading zeros to the page number based on the number you enter into this field. This is used to keep images with page numbers in the proper order when saving them. EX. If you put 4 into the ‘Page # Length’ field the number will read starting at 0001 and will count up from there always keeping the page number 4 digits long.

If you would like leading characters on the front of the page number you can add these to the ‘Imprint Text or Image’ field and they will appear in front of the page number. These pages will appear as (leading characters) – (page number). If you would like them to appear directly next to each other you would remove everything from the ‘Separator’ field, because this field is what is inserted between the imprint values. EX. You want the page numbers to read PMB#####. You would put PMB in the ‘Imprint Text’ field, remove everything from the ‘Imprint Separator’ field and put 5 in the ‘Page # Length’ field.

You will then decide where you want this information to appear on the image. If you want the page number on the top of the image do not check the box marked ‘Measure X,Y from bottom-right’ if you want page number on the bottom of the image check this box. Next, set up the X and Y coordinates to have the imprinted information located in the section of the image that you would like it. The X coordinate measures from top to bottom (bottom to top when ‘Measure X,Y from bottom-right’ is checked) and the Y coordinate measures from left to right (right to left when ‘Measure X,Y from bottom-right’ is checked). The unit of measurement of the X and Y coordinates are pixels. The number of pixels per page change based on the resolution or dpi (dots per inch) that the image was scanned at. So if you are scanning at 200 dpi 1 inch = 200, but at 300 dpi 1 inch = 300 and so on. EX. You have a 300 dpi, 8.5×11″ image that you want to imprint page numbers on the bottom left of the image an inch and a half from the the left and bottom of the page. You would want to have ‘Measure X,Y from bottom-right’ checked, 1950 in the ‘X coordinate’ field (6.5″ from right x 300 dpi) and 450 in the ‘Y coordinate’ field (1.5″ from bottom x 300 dpi).

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How do I connect to an SQL Server database?

SimpleIndex has the ability to export, query or autofill from an SQL database.  This allows you to upload data that is indexed with SimpleIndex to a table or view, search against the database or pull information from the database based on a key value.

Insert New Data

  1. Open the Job Settings Wizard and go to the Database step
  2. Set the Database Mode to Insert New Records
  3. Click the “New Data  Source…: button
  4. Select the SQL Database radio button and click Next
  5. Fill in the “Server:”, “Database:”, “Username:” and “Password” for the SQL Database
  6. Click the “Build” button to generate the Database Connection String
  7. Click the “Test” button to confirm SimpleIndex is connected to the Database properly
  8. Click the “Load” button under “Table or View:” and then select the Table or View that needs to be Inserted to
  9. Link all of the fields in SimpleIndex to the columns in the database that they should Insert to

Search Existing Data

  1. Open the Job Settings Wizard and go to the Database step
  2. Set the Database Mode to Retrieve and View Records
  3. Click the “New Data  Source…: button
  4. Select the SQL Database radio button and click Next
  5. Fill in the “Server:”, “Database:”, “Username:” and “Password” for the SQL Database
  6. Click the “Build” button to generate the Database Connection String
  7. Click the “Test” button to confirm SimpleIndex is connected to the Database properly
  8. Click the “Load” button under “Table or View:” and then select the Table or View that needs to be Inserted to
  9. Link all of the fields in SimpleIndex to the columns in the database that they should Insert to

Autofill Based on Key Values

  1. Open the Job Settings Wizard and go to the Indexing & File Naming Step
  2. Click the “Autofill Settings…” button
  3. Select the SQL Database radio button and click Next
  4. Fill in the “Server:”, “Database:”, “Username:” and “Password:” for the SQL Database
  5. Click the “Build” button to generate the Database Connection String
  6. Click the “Test” button to confirm SimpleIndex is connected to the Database properly
  7. Click the “Load” button under “Table or View:” and then select the Table or View that needs to be Inserted to
  8. Select the key field for the database column in the “Database Key Field 1:”
  9. Select the key field for the SimpleIndex index field in the “Index Key Field 1:”
  10. Set-up the Autofill fields that need to be filled in based on the key field

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How do I connect to an existing Access database?

SimpleIndex has the ability to export, query or autofill from an Access database.  This allows you to upload data that is indexed with SimpleIndex to a table or query, search against the database or pull information from the database based on a key value.

Insert New Data

  1. Open the Job Settings Wizard and go to the Database step
  2. Set the Database Mode to Insert New Records
  3. Click the “New Data  Source…: button
  4. Select the Microsoft Access radio button and click Next
  5. Click “Browse…” button under “Access Database:”, browse to the database file, select it and click Open
  6. Click the “Load” button under “Table or View:” and then select the Table or Query that needs to be Inserted to
  7. Link all of the fields in SimpleIndex to the columns in the database that they should Insert to

Search Existing Data

  1. Open the Job Settings Wizard and go to the Database step
  2. Set the Database Mode to Retrieve and View Records
  3. Click the “New Data  Source…: button
  4. Select the Microsoft Access radio button and click Next
  5. Click “Browse…” button under “Access Database:”, browse to the database file, select it and click Open
  6. Click the “Load” button under “Table or View:” and then select the Table or Query that needs to be Inserted to
  7. Link all of the fields in SimpleIndex to the columns in the database that they should Insert to

Autofill Based on Key Values

  1. Open the Job Settings Wizard and go to the Indexing & File Naming Step
  2. Click the “Autofill Settings…” button
  3. Click the “New Data  Source…: button
  4. Select the Microsoft Access radio button and click Next
  5. Click “Browse…” button under “Access Database:”, browse to the database file, select it and click Open
  6. Click the “Load” button under “Table or View:” and then select the Table or Query that is being filled from
  7. Select the key field for the database column in the “Database Key Field 1:”
  8. Select the key field for the SimpleIndex index field in the “Index Key Field 1:”
  9. Set-up the Autofill fields that need to be filled in based on the key field

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Can OCR text be saved to Office, Text, HTML or other formats?

Yes.  On the OCR step of the Job Settings Wizard you can select the text output format need in the “Full-page OCR file type” drop down. By default it is set to PDF, but can be changed to Text (txt), Word (docx), Rich Text (rtf), Open Office (odt), Excel (xlsx), PowerPoint (pptx), ePub Zip (epub), FictionBook (fb2), HTML (htm), XML (xml) or Alto XML (alto.xml).

If the output file type is set to PDF, OCR text will be embedded as hidden text in the PDF file.

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Can SimpleIndex create searchable PDF Image+Text files with hidden text?

Yes, it can.  You can configure this setting in the Job Settings Wizard by going to the OCR step and checking “Enable full-page OCR”.  There are many settings in the OCR step that you can used to customize the output and recognition of images.


SimpleIndex has two different OCR engines (Standard and Professional) that can be used to produced PDF Image + Text files or Searchable PDFs.

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SimpleIndex Walkthrough

What Is SimpleIndex?

SimpleIndex is a tool to organize your documents automatically, whether they are scanned or digital.

It provides the advanced OCR automation features of enterprise-class software, with an interface and workflow that is optimized for the desktop user.

SimpleIndex Document Processing Workflow

It can work as a standalone document manager, or a capture front-end to any app, database or cloud storage solution.

What Makes SimpleIndex Different?

Document capture applications fall into 3 main categories — Desktop, Enterprise and SDKs. SimpleIndex is a hybrid of all three.

Desktop scanning and OCR software require you to manually organize your files, which adds many hours of extra work over time, even if you only scan a few documents a week.

Enterprise solutions are designed to distribute documents to multiple servers and operators and keep hundreds of working batches in a queue, with all the extra setup time and license costs associated with them. (If they’ll even sell you a permanent license!)

APIs and SDKs make you re-invent the wheel. While you have direct integration with your app, any capabilities and UIs you want to have need to be coded. 

SimpleIndex puts powerful Enterprise automation and integration features into app that is designed and priced for desktop users.

The SimpleIndex command line interface lets IT and information workers who aren’t programmers integrate scanning, OCR and data capture into third party apps and RPA Bots.

How Does SimpleIndex Work

SimpleIndex is designed around a single batch processing model, performing all the stages of the document capture workflow in one sequence of steps.

These steps are:

  • Import (scan or read existing files)
  • Process (cleanup, OCR, barcode recognition)
  • Index (QC review images and OCR, assign index field values)
  • Export (save documents and index data to files and/or database)

SimpleIndex is designed to quickly scan and index a single batch by performing each stage automatically in sequence, without the operator having to click extra buttons or launch a different application. This design makes SimpleIndex much faster and easier to use, while lowering setup complexity and cost.

SimpleIndex replaces the series of individual commands required by some applications with a single “Run Job” button. This one click executes all the user-configured settings and batch steps.

SimpleIndex Jobs

Each type of document has different parameters for each processing stage that are used to capture and file the images. In SimpleIndex, a particular set of these parameters is called a Job. 

When configuring a job, you must specify how you want SimpleIndex to perform each of the processing stages from Import to Export. When a job is executed, SimpleIndex automatically launches all the processing stages in sequence according to the settings you specify.

The settings for a job are saved to a SimpleIndex Configuration File (*.sic). Any configuration file can be launched from Windows Explorer by double-clicking its icon just like any saved document. Doing this will start SimpleIndex and execute the job automatically.

Jobs can even be configured to perform all indexing automatically and hide the SimpleIndex user interface altogether. You can run them interactively while you work in other applications, or run them unattended on a server.

SimpleIndex Job Files
SimpleIndex Job Files

Processing the Sample Jobs

The best way to get started with SimpleIndex is to check out the sample configuration files that come with the trial download. These sample configurations demonstrate some of the key features of SimpleIndex and provide a starting point for configuring various types of jobs.

Several online videos are available to guide you through this process, or you can schedule an online demo and have us show you personally!

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RTFM (Read The Fantastic Manual)

The Simple Software Wiki has extensive documentation and how-to guides for all of the features and usage scenarios, all in a Wiki format that lets you get additional information and context for any topic when you need to know more.

Core concepts and features have their own pages, with links to all of the settings and user interface options that relate to each one. Related training videos are embedded as well.

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