OCR Form Processing

Capture data from scanned forms or PDFs with OCR and save it to CSV, XML or any SQL database. Automate PDF forms by capturing data from filled-in forms or filling in blank PDF forms from any data source.

SimpleIndex Tips & Tricks – Document Separation

OMR Document Separation Fast, accurate document separation without barcode separator sheets A unique but lesser-known feature of SimpleIndex is the ability to separate documents with Optical Mark Recognition (OMR). Many document capture applications have OMR, but few use that capability to do document separation. It offers a huge opportunity to save on document preparation costs
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SimpleIndex Tips & Tricks Handprint Recognition

Did you know that SimpleIndex can read handwriting? Now you do! SimpleIndex 11.4 gives you the option to read all kinds of handwriting. This can be done with both the FineReader and the AWS Textract OCR engines. FineReader works best with forms that have letter boxes or combs to ensure that they are filled out
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Automatic Form Alignment

Big improvements to OMR and Zone OCR in SimpleIndex 11.4 If you have tried to do checkbox recognition with scanned forms, you are probably aware of how sensitive they are to any minor differences in the image. This is especially the case if they are not all scanned on the same device. Any shifting or
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SimpleIndex 11 – More Than “Just an Update”

We almost switched to Roman Numerals, it’s that big of a deal The most significant update in years, SimpleIndex 11 introduces major new features like handwriting recognition and email processing, while optimizing existing features to dramatically improve processing speeds for large batches and files. Some more major new features are: Get the full list of new features and fixes on the SimpleIndex Wiki.
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SimpleIndex 11.4 Release Notes

SimpleIndex 11.4 new version, adds major new features like an easy option to customize what emails need to be processed from email boxes by setting dates and subfolders and automatically updating them each time these emails are processed. Additionally, ChatGPT integration was added. This allows you to extract index values and text from any document
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Take control of Sales Tax exemption forms

Automatically fill and file sales tax forms Ben Franklin once noted, “…nothing is certain except death and taxes.” In the case of state sales taxes, they may be unavoidable, but managing your customers’ sales tax exemption forms and making sure you’ve sent current exemption certificates to your vendors doesn’t have to feel like a terminal
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SimpleIndex 10.1 with Textract!

SimpleIndex 10.1 is now available, and it adds a huge new feature — Amazon Textract! The Cloud OCR License adds the Amazon AWS Textract Cloud OCR engine to SimpleIndex, unlocking a bunch of great new capabilities: The highest OCR accuracy of any available engine, using Amazon’s massive machine learning model Handprint recognition, including unconstrained and
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Language Pack for Standard/Tesseract OCR

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Global Settings Wizard reference. All versions of the SimpleIndex software include OCR with the Standard/Tesseract OCR engine. The SimpleIndex download only includes a limited set of languages with the installation. If the language you would like to OCR with SimpleIndex isn’t one of the languages included then you can download
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Process Monitor/ProcMon Instructions

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Processing and User Interface reference. In some cases there will be errors with SimpleIndex or issues without errors that are too general to get the information needed to fix the issue easily. When this happens a very detailed log is needed to determine what exact processes
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Languages Supported in SimpleSoftware OCR Engines

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Languages reference. SimpleSoftware OCR engines are using two different systems for language support. In the end languages supported by your OCR is based on your version of SimpleIndex installed, any addons (SimpleIndex Server, SimpleCoversheet, and so on) do not add any additional language support. All SimpleSoftware products have Tesseract 3.02
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How to activate SimpleExport?

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete SimpleExport reference. Activation Instructions SimpleExport Option A – New SimpleIndex Installation: If you are installing SimpleExport on the Windows computer for the first time first download SimpleIndex from the SimpleIndex Demo Installation Link. Once the SimpleIndex software has been downloaded install the software from the downloaded installation file.
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Change the Dictionary Separator Value

This is used to change the dictionary separator value when doing thesaurus matching from the default character of | to any character(s) that you want. This can be useful in cases where the values you would like in your list or dictionary might include the pipe character or “|” or “Shift Backslash” This setting is
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Change the OCR Font or Type

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete OCR Options reference. This is used to changed the default OCR recognition font or type from the default, which is “To Be Detected”. This can be used to look for a specific type of OCR font and is especially useful for recognizing things like Dotmatrix, OCR A and OCR B.
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Regular Expression (RegEx) – Syntax or Type

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Regular Expressions reference. SimpleIndex uses the .NET regular expressions library. .NET uses the JavaScript/ECMAScript regular expression syntax format. For more information see the Regular Expressions Wiki Page.
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I’m using full page OCR. The information is all appearing in the txt file but it is losing format about half way through. Data to the right is ending up at the end of the txt doc. Can this be fixed?

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Full-Page OCR reference. SimpleIndex version 7 solves this problem with the incorporation of the FineReader OCR engine. Full text in PDFs will now flow with the formatting of the PDF. Legacy Versions: SimpleIndex can also be used with other OCR applications and servers to improve accuracy, formatting and
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  • Published in OCR
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Is there a way to just use part of a bar code or OCR value? For example, extract “50” from the value “124450”

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Bar Code Recognition reference. To do this example, create a barcode field (Field 1 for example) and a 2nd field with type “Fixed”. In the template for the 2nd field, enter %FIELD1[5,2]% to get “50” from “124450”. %FIELD1% would get the entire value for Field #1, the barcode
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If I have a form which is filled manually by hand, can SimpleIndex read the data from it?

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Handprint Recognition reference. SimpleIndex offers two kinds of ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition) for converting printed and script handwriting to text. The Cloud OCR feature enables the Amazon AWS Textract OCR engine, that has the ability to read unconstrained print and scripted handwriting with surprisingly good accuracy. The FineReader OCR engine offers handprint recognition designed for forms processing. it
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How do you train the OCR engine for better accuracy?

Training has been removed with version 7 due to the addition of the ABBYY FineReader OCR engine.
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How do you configure full text searching in Retrieval mode?

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Database Settings reference. 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
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How can I improve recognition rates for my OCR fields?

There are several things you can do to improve accuracy for OCR. Scan at 300dpi, black & white for best results. Adjust the scan settings to remove background noise and improve the definition of characters. For Zone OCR, field recognition can often vary based on the surrounding white space and text in the zone. Try
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  • Published in OCR
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