Office PDF Document Indexing
SimpleIndex uses the existing text of Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) and PDF files to extract data using RegEx patterns and database keyword matching. Scanned PDF files are converted to text with OCR. Automatically assign metadata and upload to any document management system.
What is Document Imaging?
Document Imaging was the more commonly used term in the early days of document scanning and OCR and refers to any system used to replicate documents used in business. It evolved from the microfilm days where it was referred to as Document Image Management.
Document Imaging allows for the scanning of paper documents, as well as the processing of files saved electronically. These files are then named and saved for later searching.
Other document imaging terms include automatic imaging software, best digital imaging software, best imaging software, desktop imaging software, digital document imaging, digital imaging software, document imaging download, document imaging PDF, document imaging processing, document imaging products, document imaging software, document imaging solution, document imaging solutions, document imaging systems, document imaging technologies, document imaging technology, document imaging tools, image to database, imaging resource, imaging scanning software, imaging software companies, imaging software download, imaging software for windows, imaging solution, scanner imaging software, scanning and imaging, scanning imaging, and software for imaging.
Index With Non-Latin Character Sets
By default SimpleIndex uses the ANSI character set to display and edit captured OCR data, index field values and full-text OCR. This works for all languages based on the Latin alphabet (English, French, Spanish, German, etc.)
To index documents in other languages like Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Arabic and other non-Latin alphabets, set the default character set using this registry key. If the key is not set correctly then Unicode text will show up as ??????????.
Use Notepad to edit the “Charset” value from the sample setting below and save it to a .reg file. Then double-click the .reg file to install (Administrator privileges required).
You can download the .reg file here but you still need to edit in Notepad to set the Charset value before installing.
If you are on a 32-bit operating system be sure to remove the extra “\WOW6432Node” from the registry path.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\SimpleIndex\Misc]“Charset”=”1”
| Charset Name | Charset Value |
| ANSI_CHARSET (Latin) | 0 |
| DEFAULT_CHARSET | 1 |
| SYMBOL_CHARSET | 2 |
| SHIFTJIS_CHARSET (Japanese) | 128 |
| HANGUL_CHARSET (Korean) | 129 |
| GB2312_CHARSET (Simplified Chinese) | 134 |
| CHINESEBIG5_CHARSET (Chinese) | 136 |
| GREEK_CHARSET (Greek) | 161 |
| TURKISH_CHARSET (Turkish) | 162 |
| HEBREW_CHARSET (Hebrew) | 177 |
| ARABIC_CHARSET (Arabic) | 178 |
| BALTIC_CHARSET (Baltic) | 186 |
| RUSSIAN_CHARSET (Russian) | 204 |
| THAI_CHARSET (Thai) | 222 |
| EE_CHARSET | 238 |
| OEM_CHARSET | 255 |
The full list of values is at https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc194829.aspx.
Skip to Blank Index on Save Index
If you would like to have SimpleIndex automatically go to the next page with a blank field and highlight that field when the Save Index button or Enter a change to the XML text of the Job Configuration is needed. This can be useful to quickly move to the next document that has a blank Index field.
Instructions to set Skip to Blank index on Save Index:
- Right click on the Job Configuration file that you would like to suppress the prompt on and select Open With>Notepad
- Search the XML settings text open in Notepad for this term:
<SKIP_TO_NEXT_BLANK> - Set the value between from “False” to “True”
<SKIP_TO_NEXT_BLANK>True</SKIP_TO_NEXT_BLANK> - Save and close the file.
Check and Repair All PDF Files
You can set SimpleIndex to assume that it needs to check every PDF file and fix it.
Go to this location in the Windows Registry:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\SimpleIndex\Misc
Create a New String Value called “FixAllPDF” and set the value to 1
Keep Pages in Original Order when Bookmarking
If you want to keep all the pages in the same order that they were imported, even though they all go with different bookmarks then do the following.
1. Open the configuration in Notepad.
2. Search for <BOOKMARK_PAGE_ORDER>
3. Change this line from “false” to “true”: <BOOKMARK_PAGE_ORDER>true</BOOKMARK_PAGE_ORDER>
4. Save and close.
Is it possible to search for and retrieve documents with Windows desktop search?
Windows Search works great with SimpleIndex because all index data can be saved to the folder and file names as well as the file properties, and OCR text can be saved to hidden layers in PDF files. Windows Search will read all of these elements when building its index and will return any matching files when you search.
Using Windows Search on a file server allows for instantaneous searching across terabytes of documents and text for all of the users on your network.
IFilters allow Windows Search to search within file contents.
Here are three popular PDF IFilters that will enable text searching for PDF files:
- Foxit PDF IFilter (commercial)
- TET PDF IFilter (free/commercial)
- Adobe PDF IFilter (32-bit / 64-bit) (free)
If you have issues with PDF text searching in Windows 10, this article has detailed instructions for resolving PDF IFilter issues:
https://fixedit.itxpress.biz/2018/07/05/searching-pdfs-in-windows-10/
- Published in Database & Retrieval, Export, Office PDF Text Processing
How do you select what types of files to process?
You can tell SimpleIndex what types of files it should process and which file types to ignore.
This is done by clicking “Job Options” On the “Batch” tab you will find a field labeled “Input file types or mask”. These are the file types that SimpleIndex will input files from. The default types are:
TIF,PDF,JPG,GIF,BMP,DOC,XLS,PPT,DOCX,XLSX,PPTX,VSD,DWG,AVI,MP3
To process all files, enter *
SimpleIndex will ignore any file whose extension does not appear on the list.
In SimpleIndex 6 or above you can enter file masks to filter input files. Some examples are:
abc*.pdf (PDF files starting with “abc”)
ab??ef.* (All files starting with “ab”, 2 characters and “ef”)
It is possible to have some file types open automatically in their default application. This can be done by inserting a pipe “|” into the list. Any file types after the pipe will be opened in their default application. For example:
TIF,PDF,JPG|WAV,MP3,WMV,AVI
will cause SimpleIndex to display image files and open sound and video files in the default media player.
- Published in Import
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.
- Published in Indexing & UI
Can the values of 2 or more fields be combined in a single field?
Set the Type for the field that you want to store the combinded value to “Fixed”.
In the template setting for that field, you can enter the keyword %FIELD#% (where # is the field number) and the keyword will be replaced with the value of the designated field when it is saved.
For example, to combine your first 2 fields into third, inserting a comma between them, set the template for field 3 to:
%FIELD1%,%FIELD2%
- Published in Indexing & UI
How do you configure OCR to read index information from MS Office or PDF documents?
MS Office and PDF files generated by software or PDF printer drivers already have the text you need to recognize in the file. Scanned documents need to use OCR to read text from an image of the page. With Office and PDF files, SimpleIndex can just read the text, which is much faster and accurate than image OCR.
To recognize index fields from the document text, first create OCR fields on the Index tab as you would normally. Next, on the Zones & OCR options tab, check the “Use Full Page OCR for this Field” option for each OCR field. This tells SimpleIndex to process the existing file text.
If the index value is a unique pattern of digits or list of possible values, use Template or Dictionary matching to locate the value within the text. Please see the manual for details on Template and Dictionary matching.
If the value appears in a specific location in each file, coordinates can be used to locate it. When processing text, the X, Y, Width and Height settings correspond to line and column numbers within the file text. This is explained in greater depth in the manual.
SimpleIndex will assume that any TXT file with the same name as a file being processed is the OCR text for that file, so this method can work with any type of file.
Find out more about Optical Character Recognition on the SimpleOCR Guide.
- Published in OCR, Office PDF Text Processing
Why does the word “MISSING” show up in filenames and index fields when the field is blank?
| “MISSING” is what SimpleIndex puts for any field value used as a filename or folder name and is left blank by defualt. You can change this to whatever you want it to say when a field value is left blank. To do this go to “Job Options” then to the “Index” Tab now click “Advanced Options”. In the middle of the window you will see a box labeled “Use this value whe a field is empty” just change “DEFAULT” to whatever you want (including leaving it blank) and click OK. Now the next time you have a blank field value for a filename or folder name it will have your new message. |
- Published in Export, Indexing & UI
How do I configure the output folder and file naming scheme?
Use the Folder and Filename check boxes on the Index tab in the Job Options to indicate whether field values will be used to generate subfolders or filenames. Any field with the Folder option checked will create nested subfolders for each value in the order the fields are listed. Any field with the Filename checked will have the values concatenated to form the filename.
For example, if Field 1 and Field 3 have the Folder option checked, and Field 2 and Field 3 have the Filename option checked, image filenames will be created in the format:
%OUTPUTFOLDER%\Field 1\Field 3\Field 2 – Field 3.tif
The Filename Separator option on the Advanced tab lets you change the ” – ” between the fields in the filename to anything you want.
- Published in Export
Automatic Indexing Using Existing Data
Automatic Indexing Using Existing Data
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 database. Autofill uses a database lookup to retrieve records that match a key value entered by the user. 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.
The key field may be typed by the user, or it may be read from the document automatically using barcode recognition or OCR. The lookup is performed either when the user changes this field or when the index values are saved. If the lookup finds multiple matching records, the user will be notified and the first set of values will be used by default.
When used with pre-index batches, key information can be read automatically from barcodes or OCR and matched to database records with a single click. Search on up to 99 index fields without a single keystroke!
KB Articles for Automatic Indexing
- Exclude Index Field from Index Log
- Turn Off Prompts and Pop Ups on Job Configurations
- Change the Font Size of Index Fields
- Large documents (>500 pg) Slow to Process - Workaround
- Regular Expression (RegEx) - Syntax or Type
- Index With Non-Latin Character Sets
- Skip to Blank Index on Save Index
- Stop Autorun When Double Clicking Configuration
- Autonumber Increment Value
- Overlap of SimpleView Viewer in SimpleIndex Display
MS Office & PDF Text Parsing
Office Videos | PDF Video
The template and dictionary matching capabilities of SimpleIndex‘s OCR function can be used to extract index information from the text of existing MS Office and PDF files, or any file with an accompanying TXT file. SimpleIndex® will search the document for matches on unique patterns and value lists, then index the document with the matching data. Zone coordinates can be set to limit the search area to pre-defined regions on standard forms. The result is a fully automated indexing and renaming process for all your electronic documents!
Using existing text, SimpleIndex can index and rename hundreds of files each minute and achieve perfect accuracy. These files can then be quickly searched with SimpleIndex Retrieval, SharePoint and Google search engines, or uploaded into your company’s document/content management system or custom business applications.
Enhanced Text Parsing & PDF Support
MS Office and PDF text parsing features are now included in the Basic version of SimpleIndex, making it much more affordable to enable automatic document sorting on the desktop. Additional Office and PDF features include:
- Convert any MS Office, HTML, XML and image files to PDF before processing
- Read and write password protected PDF file
- Searchable PDF output (Image + Hidden Text)
- Interactive template builder and tester
- Easily select PDF or PDF/A output format
- Native PDF viewer and auto-repair of problematic PDFs
- Read data from PDF forms
- Populate blank PDF forms with index data
Batch Convert Office Documents to PDF
If you have Microsoft Office or OpenOffice installed, you can use SimpleIndex to automatically convert MS Office documents to PDF files for archival. PDF files are better for archival than editable formats like Word and Excel. They can be annotated, encrypted, searched and viewed with free PDF readers.
There are many free applications that let you convert documents to PDF one at a time. SimpleIndex lets you convert thousands of files at once while it also extracts data from the text for indexing or data entry automation. This feature is ideal for migrating or archiving Office documents to SharePoint, document management systems and custom web applications.
Quickly Organize Any File on Your Computer
SimpleIndex lets you process any type of file on your computer. If an OLE-enabled viewer is installed, SimpleIndex will display the document on the screen. Other documents can be opened automatically in their default application when they are indexed. Quickly type index field data that can be used to reorganize the files into subfolders and structured filenames for browsing and searching on your network, or uploaded to your document/content management system or custom business application.
If the file has an accompanying text file (*.TXT) with the same name, the text in that file can be used for index field extraction, fully automating the process.
Viewing & Indexing MS Office Documents
SimpleIndex features full support for viewing and editing MS Office documents (Word, PowerPoint and Excel) on computers with or without MS Office installed. The full application interface is displayed within the SimpleIndex viewer, letting users view the full content of the documents, edit them with all the features of MS Office and save the changes. Modify privileges can be denied using Windows file security or by the SimpleIndex administration wizard to keep out unauthorized changes.
If MS Office is not installed, SimpleIndex can open and display them in the built-in viewer in read-only mode.
KB Articles for MS Office & PDF Text Parsing
- Change the Dictionary Separator Value
- Regular Expression (RegEx) - Syntax or Type
- Check and Repair All PDF Files
- Keep Pages in Original Order when Bookmarking
- Do Not Combine Pages to 1 Bookmark
- Can I split a PDF based on bookmark values?
- Is it possible to search for and retrieve documents with Windows desktop search?
- Can SimpleIndex read bar codes from existing PDF files?
- Is there a way to just use part of a bar code or OCR value? For example, extract "50" from the value "124450"
- How do you configure OCR to read index information from MS Office or PDF documents?
Features
SimpleIndex is the perfect solution for small business and departments looking to manage their files from a single interface, developers who don’t want to reinvent the wheel and large companies with many locations looking to decentralize their scanning.
SimpleIndex organizes scanned images and electronic documents into a single document management database your employees can access on their desktops.
SimpleIndex takes the labor out of document imaging by providing powerful barcode recognition and OCR search algorithms that can find index values no matter where they are on the page. By providing these essential automations for a reasonable price, we make document management affordable for anyone.
The most unique automation is our OCR template and dictionary matching search algorithms. This lets you find information like date, customer name, invoice number and other information on documents with different layouts. These can even be applied to the text in Office documents and PDF files to organize these files automatically and attach them to a database.
The SimpleCoversheet barcode printing application lets anyone in your company print bar-coded coversheets with all the information needed to identify a document. This is perfect for scanning with a centralized scanner or networked digital copier. SimpleIndex can then be configured to process these documents automatically without any user intervention whatsoever!
This level of automation is provided by SimpleIndex‘s command line interface. All the settings related to scanning or searching documents can be saved to “Job Files”, which can be saved to an icon and launched with a click of the mouse or a single line of code. These jobs can be configured to scan documents, read barcodes and OCR, generate folders and filenames and upload the index information to a database in a single step.
It is simply not possible to find an easier, faster way to process your documents!
Key Features and Recent Enhancements
- SimpleIndex Standard has Tesseract OCR and DTK Barcode engines. These provide good recognition on clean originals.
- SimpleIndex Professional adds FineReader OCR and Accusoft Barcode. These are able to recognize hard-to-read text and bar codes, and improve overall speed and accuracy.
- Process existing text in PDF files and MS Office documents in all versions.
- OCR
- Pro version includes ABBYY® FineReader Engine for faster, more accurate OCR
- Searchable PDF output
- Clipboard / Screen Shot OCR
- Point-Click OCR – Click on text to send it to an index field
- Enhanced OCR Options – match against other indexes, skip OCR on files with existing text
- Support for international character sets using Unicode
- Bar Code Recognition
- Multi-engine Barcode voting to boost accuracy (Professional version)
- Support for most 2D barcodes in all versions
- User-defined Barcode delimiter – no longer restricted to “|” for parsing multi-index barcodes
- Pro version includes Accusoft barcode engine for better barcode recognition
- Find/Replace characters in barcodes for matching or autofill
- TWAIN and ISIS Scanning
- TWAIN support in all versions. ISIS support available as an add-on or in Pro version.
- Improved real-time image processing
- Multiple scan windows when using ISIS
- Scan directly to a network folder (processing occurs during scan)
- Desktop Processing
- Selectively reprocess files
- Run multiple copies of SimpleIndex simultaneously
- Save any image region to a separate file for signature capture, etc.
- Server Processing
- Run multiple jobs on different schedules
- Run multiple copies of the same job for parallel processing and increased throughput
- Server licenses can be purchased in 1 Million Page per Year increments as an add-on to any workstation license
- Unlimited page barcode processing license available with Advanced Barcode Server
- Server processing compatible with Windows 7 or above and all Windows Server versions
- PDF Handling
- Support for reading and writing password protected PDF files
- Convert MS Office, HTML, XML and images to PDF before processing
- Searchable PDF output
- Native PDF Viewer – no dependence on 3rd party software
- PDF Auto-repair – attempts correction of bad PDF files
- Indexing
- Return MD5 hash values
- Configure default values for empty fields
- Export to XML
- Edit Fixed Fields – make changes to auto-generated indexes
- SharePoint Integration
- Compatible with all versions of SharePoint and SharePoint Online
- Append to or replace existing files in SharePoint
- Automatically match index fields to SharePoint columns to populate data
Website Resources
SimpleIndex.com is full of information and interactive content to help you learn what you need to know to implement SimpleIndex in your organization.
- Design Philosophy & Getting Started Guide
An introduction to the way SimpleIndex approaches document processing - Bringing Document Imaging to Everyone
How Simple Software solutions reduce the cost of entry into the Paperless Office - Sample Applications
Examples of different ways you can put SimpleIndex to use - Compare SimpleIndex to the Competition
Videos showing the same batch of documents being scanned and indexed with SimpleIndex as well as 4 top desktop document capture applications. - Top Features of SimpleIndex
Detailed information on the automated scanning and indexing features of SimpleIndex - Demonstration Videos
See how SimpleIndex automates indexing with OCR and barcode recognition - Simple Software University
Online training videos teaching all aspects of Simple Software configuration - Simple Software FAQ
Answers to common questions about Simple Software products - How Many Clicks does it Take to Scan My Documents?
Printable brochure in PDF format
SimpleIndex Applications in Your Industry
PDF brochures outlining some of the applications for SimpleIndex in various industries.
SimpleIndex Feature Highlights
Links to more information on the major features of SimpleIndex.
- Streamlined Document Capture
Ways that SimpleIndex helps reduce labor by streamlining the workflow and automating common indexing tasks - TWAIN and ISIS Scanner Driver Support
Use any scanner with SimpleIndex - Zone, Full Page and Dynamic OCR
Extract index data no matter where it appears on the page - Barcode Recognition
Read barcodes from scanned images to automate indexing - Optical Mark Recognition (OMR)
Read check boxes to find True/False or Yes/No values - Index Autofill
Populate multiple search fields with existing data from your database - Electronic Imprinting
Apply bates stamps and other image stamps/endorsements electronically - Database Integration
A full range of interactive database features allow for creative integration with custom database applications - Document Presence Auditing
Make sure that all required documents are present in the batch before it is released - Document Retrieval Options
How to find and view files once you have indexed them with SimpleIndex - Command Line Processing and Custom Application Integration
The SimpleIndex command-line interface makes it the easiest document capture application to integrate with your custom business software - Enable Distributed Document Capture
Companies with many remote locations can now afford to implement Distributed Capture with SimpleIndex
The Simple Software Imaging Suite
These applications enhance and expand the functionality of SimpleIndex by providing barcode printing, automatic uploading, quality control and direct integration with popular applications like QuickBooks.
Top Features
The following is a list of the Top 25 major document capture features of SimpleIndex, in no particular order.
- Indexing support for all file types
- Viewing support for any installed, OLE-enabled application
- No monthly page processing limitations
- Text processing support for OCR’d images, PDF files and MS Office documents
- Barcode Recognition
- Dynamic & Zone OCR
- Manual Zone OCR by indexing operator
- Full-Page OCR to text, MS Word or HTML
- Optical Mark Recognition (OMR)
- Unstructured data capture using Template and Dictionary Matching
- ODBC & OLEDB database connectivity
- Use any database to store index data for document management and retrieval
- Automatic population of index fields using database lookup (Autofill)
- Document Presence Auditing – ensures all required pages are present in each batch
- Clipboard / Screen Shot OCR
- Command line execution
- Input from any TWAIN or ISIS scanner or network folder
- Media Wizard to create royalty-free, searchable document CDs or DVDs
- Output images to TIFF, JPEG, PDF or PDF/A
- Page Order Validation: reads the page number from each page with OCR and compare it to the scanned page order.
- Double-Index Validation: compare the value of two fields during unattended processing and automatically route documents to exceptions when the values don’t match.
- Automatic forwarding of a copy of the first page: from each exported file a first page is forwarded to a separate folder for data processing.
- Integrated document separation: combines pages into multi-page documents without the need for a 2-step configuration.
- Output index information to database or comma-delimited text file
- Blank page detection and deletion
- SharePoint 2010 Integration
- Auto-Rotate
- Easy-to-use cropping and redaction tools to remove confidential parts of images
- Electronic imprinting and bates stamping
New versions History
Simple Software is always working on updating and upgrading. Here you can find change log for SimpleIndex.
KB Articles for OCR Features
- Languages Supported in SimpleSoftware OCR Engines
- What is Document Imaging?
- Change the Dictionary Separator Value
- Change the OCR Font or Type
- Regular Expression (RegEx) - Syntax or Type
- Autonumber Increment Value
- 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?
- Is there a way to just use part of a bar code or OCR value? For example, extract "50" from the value "124450"
- If I have a form which is filled manually by hand, can SimpleIndex read the data from it?
- How do you train the OCR engine for better accuracy?