Integrated document separation: combines pages into multi-page documents without the need for a 2-step configuration.
Separation of pages into multi-page documents.
OMR Optical Mark Recognition
Simple Checkbox Recognition
Some forms require scanning software to recognize the presence or absence of a mark in a particular location, such as a checkbox, without worrying about the specific shape or symbol drawn therein. The ability to do this is called Optical Mark Recognition, or OMR. Let’s take a look at how this feature can help you index your documents and how SimpleIndex improves upon the standard OMR process:
Optical Mark Recognition
Optical Mark Recognition lets you define check box regions on scanned images. OMR is very fast and can be used for a variety of applications:
- Business reply mail
- Simple surveys
- Separate multi-page documents
- Document routing control
- Verify presence of signatures
To configure OMR, use an unfilled form to obtain baseline counts of how many black “pixels” are in the box. When processing, SimpleIndex compares the amount of black in each image to the baseline value to determine if the box is checked or not.
With OMR, it is very important that the check boxes appear in the same place on every scan, and that other text on the document does not move into your check box zone. For best results, use large boxes with plenty of white space around them.
We wouldn’t recommend using the SimpleIndex OMR feature to grade the SATs, but if your documents include a few check box values that you want to capture the SimpleIndex OMR feature is what you need. For more advanced OMR and forms processing solutions, please visit ScanStore.com.
OMR Document Separation
SimpleIndex includes a unique use for mark recognition that can save you thousands on document separator pages. One of the most labor-intensive parts of scanning multi-page files is detecting where one document ends and the next one starts. Traditionally this has been done with blank pages (which doesn’t work with 2-sided documents) or barcodes and patch codes (which must be printed). All of these solutions require someone to insert a piece of paper between each document before scanning, wasting time, money, and paper.
- Using the OMR feature in SimpleIndex, create a checkmark field in the upper-left corner of the page.
- Create an Autonumber field that increments a document number each time the checkmark is found.
- Use this job file to scan and separate documents into multi-page files.
- Create a 2nd job file to index the multi-page files.
- Use the Post-Process feature to run the two jobs consecutively.
When prepping files, simply take a felt tip pen and put a small mark the upper-left corner on the first page of each new document. This can be done very quickly, creates no additional paper and has a negligible effect on scan quality.
Zone OCR and Dynamic OCR

Many document scanning solutions use Zone OCR to obtain index data from the page.
SimpleIndex improves upon this time-tested but ultimately limited model with its Dynamic OCR feature.
Let’s look at the difference between the two methods:
Zone OCR
Zone OCR is used to read document indexes or tags from text on the page. It is a great way to automate the data entry associated with scanning documents.
However, there are several limitations to zone OCR that must be overcome:
- Index information must be in the exact same place on every page
- Documents shift and skew during scanning, causing the zones to not line up
- If surrounding lines or text on the document are too close, they can encroach on the zone
Dynamic OCR
SimpleIndex overcomes these limitations by using Dynamic OCR technology to locate the desired text even when it moves around on the page. Our simplified version of Dynamic OCR works great for many types of documents at a fraction of the cost of other solutions.
- Index information can appear anywhere on any page
- Unwanted characters are automatically ignored
- Find unique patterns of letters and numbers using Template Matching
(Social Security #, Date, etc.) - Use Dictionary Matching to find a value from a list of possible values
(Vendor Name, Document Type, etc.)
Dynamic OCR Examples
In the video we see how SimpleIndex approaches a typical Zone OCR example. With SimpleIndex you can use large zones that give a wide margin for error. Template and Dictionary matching are then used to extract the 7-digit Account Number, 6-digit Order Number and Company Name. SimpleIndex discards the surrounding text and keeps the correct value.
Another common example is finding a unique identifier, for example a social security number, that could appear anywhere on the page. Simply enter the template ###-##-#### and SimpleIndex will search the full OCR text until it finds a match. Since only one social security number is likely to appear on the page, a match on this pattern is almost certainly the required value.
With dictionary matching, you can give SimpleIndex a list of possible values and it will automatically search the zone or page for each possible value until it finds a match.
Many dynamic forms processing applications can be implemented using these simple algorithms. This makes SimpleIndex far more versatile than other zone OCR solutions that require the index value to be in the exact same location on every page. Yet SimpleIndex costs only a fraction of the price!
SimpleIndex‘s dynamic forms processing can greatly speed up data entry by eliminating a good percentage of indexing work. For many this can put the labor cost of scanning within their reach.

Dynamic OCR can also be applied to MS Office and PDF files, creating a fully automated process for intelligently indexing and reorganizing electronic documents.

Amazon AWS Textract Cloud OCR
With Textract you can capture data from almost any type of form, including handwritten ones! Textract identifies labeled text anywhere on the document and returns the label text along with the corresponding value. Map the labels to index fields in SimpleIndex and you are ready to capture that data no matter where it appears on the page.
Textract uses machine learning with a huge model based on the billions of pages processed using Textract to provide the most accurate OCR and form field extraction solution available.
By default, Textract is only available as an API and requires custom coding to integrate it into your document workflows. SimpleIndex turns it into a fully-featured document batch document and data processing app that is ready to use out-of-the-box.
Since there are no templates to configure or train, setup can be done in hours instead of days or weeks months required by other enterprise data capture solutions.
Pay-as-you-go pricing makes SimpleIndex with Textract the most affordable way to batch process forms for projects with less than 50,000 pages per year to process, especially if you need to read handwriting or have forms with many layout variations.
Wiki: How to configure AWS Textract OCR in SimpleIndex
Support for Regular Expressions

SimpleIndex OCR has a simple built-in template format, as well as support for Regular Expressions. Regular Expressions (RegEx for short) let you define complex search patterns to extract matching values from the text. This greatly enhances the functionality of the dynamic OCR in SimpleIndex, making it capable of finding variable-length fields with no distinct pattern.
Regular Expressions are a commonly used in text parsing applications. The Perl programming language makes extensive use of RegEx, as do UNIX utilities like “grep”. Many programmers and IT personnel are already familiar with RegEx and can create complex expressions without specific training.
Click here for a reference guide to Regular Expressions
New OCR Features in Latest Version
- OCR language pack now includes all available Tesseract languages including Hindi, Tamil, Arabic, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Hebrew and many more.
- FineReader engine upgraded from version 9 to version 11, providing improved accuracy, MRC compression and multi-threaded processing for large documents.
- Amazon AWS Textract Cloud OCR option gives you advanced forms extraction, accounts payable invoice and receipt extraction, handprint recognition, and the most accurate OCR available.
How to Configure SimpleIndex OCR
Our Wiki help has extensive information on how to configure OCR for various document and data capture scenarios.
- Zone OCR read data in a specific location
- Template matching to match unique patterns
- Dictionary matching to match a list of possible values
- OCR Options OCR job settings that apply to all fields
- File Formats that can be output by OCR
- Languages supported by OCR
- FineReader versus Tesseract OCR engines
- Searchable PDF with MRC compression
- OCR to Field for point and click OCR during verification
- Cloud OCR using Textract
Watch this Simple Software University training video to see how to configure and run an OCR job with SimpleIndex.
KB Articles for Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
- Language Pack for Standard/Tesseract OCR
- 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?