General configuration and how-to articles for SimpleIndex.

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 your required language(s). Once you do this you will be able to pick the language that you want to read with the Standard/Tesseract OCR engine.

  1. Go to the Tesseract Language Download Site
  2. Select the language you want and download or download all the language
  3. Copy the language files (unzip if downloading more than one language) to this folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\Tesseract\v3.04\tessdata
  4. Close and Reopen SimpleIndex and the downloaded languages will now be selectable
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How to connect to a SharePoint Online site that uses multi-factor authentication

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete SharePoint reference.

SimpleIndex does not support multi-factor authentication to connect to a SharePoint Online site that implements it.

If your admin has set up 2-step verification for your organization you’ll need to generate an app password so the app can connect to Office 365.

Once you have an app password, you use this in place of your original password with SimpleIndex to connect to the SharePoint site. Your SharePoint administrators should be able to create one for you.

You can find more information about App Password here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/multi-factor-authentication/end-user/multi-factor-authentication-end-user-app-passwords

For instructions on how to set one up, visit this page:

https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Create-an-app-password-for-Office-365-3e7c860f-bda4-4441-a618-b53953ee1183

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Remove Service in Windows 10 When Not Working in SimpleIndex Server Dialog

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Unattended Processing reference.

Option 1 – Command

  1. You can also remove services using a command line. Hold down the Windows Key, then press “R” to bring up the Run dialog.
  2. Type “SC DELETE servicename“, then press “Enter“.

Option 2 – Registry

  1. Hold down the Windows Key and press “R“.
  2. Type “regedit“, then select “OK“.
  3. Navigate to the following location in the registry:
    • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
    • System
    • CurrentControlSet
    • Services
  4. There are folders under “Services” that contain each service. The “DisplayName” values in each of these folders equals the Service Name. Go through the list or use the “Edit” > “Find” menu to search for the service you wish to remove.
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What are SimpleIndex Specifications?

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Installation reference.

SimpleIndex 11 Specifications

  • Windows 11 64-bit edition, Windows 10 64-bit edition, Windows 8 64-bit edition and Windows 7 64-bit edition
  • Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2022
  • A computer with a 2 GHz Intel Pentium or higher, or equivalent processor, 3 GHz recommended, 64-bit only
  • 4 GB of memory (RAM), 8 GB recommended
  • 3.2 GB total hard drive space for all components
  • WIA, TWAIN or ISIS scanner driver
  • Web access needed for online activation, offline activation available upon request
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Command Line Arguments

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Command Line Interface reference.

In addition to running a particular SimpleIndex Job Configuration with a command line script, other features might be required. This could be stopping dialogs from turning on, suppressing dialog boxes or passing the input or output folder to the Job. Below you will find some of the commands that can be added to the standard command line that SimpleIndex uses.

Start with the traditional full command line to run SimpleIndex, which you can find here:

“C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\SimpleIndex.exe” /c:”<Path to Job>”

In this example /c: is the command to direct what Job Configuration is used, but I have listed more below. Each new argument should be separated by a space.

  1. /q = Prevents certain dialog boxes from appearing that require a manual click.
  2. /s = Prevents other dialog boxes from appearing that require a manual click.
  3. /i: = Set the specific Input Folder you would like to import files from.
    EX. “C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\SimpleIndex.exe” /c:”<C:\Images\Scan Files.sic>” /i:”C:\Images\Input”
  4. /o: = Set the specific Output Folder you would like to import files from.
    EX. “C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\SimpleIndex.exe” /c:”<C:\Images\Scan Files.sic>” /i:”C:\Images\Output”
  5. /d:15 = Set Processing Log to highest level and turn on log output. This will turn on the Processing Log, without having to do it manually.
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Exclude Index Field from Index Log

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Index & Batch Logging reference.

Many times when outputting a Log file via CSV, XML, TXT, etc. there will be index fields that are required in the Job Configuration, but not desired to be output in the Index Log. In those cases those fields can be excluded from the Index Log with a “~” character at the end of the Index Field Name.

To do this go into the Job Options/Job Settings Wizard, go to the Index tab/step, find the Index field that you want to exclude from the Index Log and add this to the end of the field name: ~

EX. The original Index Name is “OCR Text” and that field should be excluded from the Index Log, so it doesn’t appear. This field should be changed to “OCR Text~”.

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Set Job Timeout on Server Processing Job Configurations

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Unattended Processing reference.

Certain Job Configurations when running as a service will stop in the middle of processing the batch. There won’t be an error in the Windows Event Viewer or in the SimpleIndex Processing Log that indicate what the issue. This can be fixed in many cases by setting the Job Timeout to stop the Batch after a certain number of seconds, which causes bad batches to get skipped and not to run indefinitely.

Instructions to set the Job Timeout:

  1. Open the Configure SimpleIndex Service.
  2. Select the Job Configuration that you would like to set the Job Timeout for from the list.
  3. Set the number of seconds that you would like to have a Batch Job end if no progress is made. We usually recommend that this be set to 60.
  4. Click the Save Changes button
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Turn On Replacement Characters for Barcodes

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Bar Code Recognition reference.

With OCR processing certain characters will read incorrectly in some cases, such as an I reading as a 1 and an O reading as a 0. If this is expected to happen you can set the OCR to use the character replacement feature to replace all instances of the letter O with the number 0.

Barcodes don’t have this issue nearly as much during the recognition process as OCR does, but sometimes it can be beneficial to have this replacement option available for the barcodes as well. This is turned off by default, but can be turned on in the Job Configuration’s XML text.

Instructions for enabling replacement characters in barcodes:

  1. Right click on the Job Configuration file that you would like to suppress the prompt on and select Open With>Notepad
  2. Search the XML settings text open in Notepad for this term:
    <BARCODE_REPLACE_CHARS>
  3. Set the value between from “False” to “True”. It should look like this:
    <BARCODE_REPLACE_CHARS>True</BARCODE_REPLACE_CHARS>
  4. Save and close the file.
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Turn Off Prompts and Pop Ups on Job Configurations

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Job Configuration Interface reference.

SimpleIndex has a variety of prompts and pop ups that must be clicked that come up by default. These are normally needed by most users to set certain options or perform certain tasks based on the Job Configuration settings that have been set-up. These can be forced to be turned off though with a command line script. This can be configured in the settings for a shortcut that points to the Job Configuration that you would like to suppress the prompts and pop ups on.

Instructions to set Job Configuration shortcut to suppress all prompts and pop-ups:

  1. Right click on the Job Configuration file and select “Create shortcut” or “Sent to>Desktop”
  2. Find the shortcut, Right click on the shortcut and select “Properties”
  3. In the “Target:” field change the text in the field.
  4. Here is an example of the original text in the “Target:” field of a Job Configuration shortcut: “C:\SimpleIndex\Scan and OCR.sic”
  5. Here is what this section would be changed to for suppressing the prompts:
    “C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\SimpleIndex.exe” /c:”C:\SimpleIndex\Scan and OCR.sic” /s
  6. The “/s” in this example is the command to suppress prompts and pop ups in SimpleIndex.
  7. The path to the Job Configuration file that you want to use will need to be set to the proper destination and filename, including file type extension.
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Change the Font Size of Index Fields

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Index Fields reference.

Index fields have a default 8 point font size, but this can be changed if required for visibility. You can change this by editing a registry file in the Registry Editor and set any font size you would like.

To make this change follow these instructions

  1. Close out of 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 this window you will see a key called “IndexFontSize”.
  5. Open this file and change the value to the font size you would like and then click OK.
  6. Close and reopen SimpleIndex to see the change in effect.
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Connect SimpleIndex to FTP Site

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Distributed Capture reference.

SimpleIndex can import or export files that need to be or have been processed from an FTP site, but it requires that the FTP site be configured as a Windows Drive Letter.

Configuring an FTP site as a Windows Drive Letter isn’t included in Windows, so third party software is required for this. We recommend SSHFS-Win Manager for this, but any tool that will accomplish this will work.

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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 are occurring when the issue happens and which processes are failing. This is done by using the Microsoft Process Monitor to log everything while running SimpleIndex.

The instructions for how to install and run the Process Monitor are below.

  1. Download the process monitor from Microsoft by clicking HERE and then clicking Download Process Monitor.
  2. Unzip the “ProcessMonitor.zip” file and save it to any location on the computer running SimpleIndex.
  3. Run the “Procmon.exe”
  4. Once the program opens go to the File Menu and uncheck “Capture Events”
  5. Go to the Edit menu and select “Clear Display”
  6. Go to the Filter Menu and select Filter
  7. Set the first drop down to Process Name
  8. Set the second drop down to Contains
  9. Type in “Simple” into the third field
  10. Click Apply then OK
  11. Go to the File Menu and check “Capture Events”
  12. Immediately run SimpleIndex with the process that is having the issue exactly as you normally would and let it run until the issue occurs.
  13. Once the issue occurs go back to the Process Monitor window and then to the File Menu and uncheck “Capture Events”
  14. Go to the File Menu and select save.
  15. Use all the defaults to save to a folder that you can easily access and name the file with today’s date.
  16. Send us this file for review.
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Export Issues and Missing Images after Export

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Export Settings reference.

If you are having issues with the files not exporting properly or you have missing images in the export folder that should have been saved, then a registry key needs to be added to correct this. This registry key changes the export process from the faster process that SimpleIndex uses by default, to a slower export process that will avoid these issues.

Instructions:
1. Search for “regedit” on your computer.
2. Navigate to this folder in the Registry Editor window: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\SimpleIndex\Misc
3. In the right pane of the Registry Editor window Right Click and select New>String Value
4. Set the name of the file to this: EnableAtalaExport
5. Double click on the “EnableAtalaExport” registry key, set the Value to “0” (Zero) and click OK.

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FastImport to Disable Automatic Processing During Import

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Fast Import Interface reference.

SimpleIndex has a variety of processing functions that automatically happen behind the scenes when importing documents to improve the quality and functionality of the images and processing capabilities of the software.

On some occasions these extra processing functions cause delays and conflicts or aren’t needed at all. If these processing functions are causing SimpleIndex to crash or slow down the import processing too much for a particular Job Configuration that can be turned off with a registry setting.

Follow these instructions to add this registry setting:

  1. Close out of 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 “FastImport”
  6. Open the “FastImport” Registry Key, set the value to “1” and then click OK
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Large Documents (>500 pages) are Slow to Process

When working with PDF image files containing a high number of pages (typically in excess of 500, but can vary by file and PC running the job) SimpleIndex may run into performance issues as it attempts to hold all of those pages in memory and perform the requested operations (full-text OCR in particular can tax a system in these circumstances).

SimpleIndex 11:

Use the Fast Import and Fast Export options to use our new, optimized import and export that can split or merge PDF files with thousands of pages in a matter of seconds. These options disable the optional features that require the slower import and export operations and allow for much faster processing.

Older Versions of SimpleIndex:

A workaround in this scenario is to convert the large PDF to a folder of smaller PDFs files that can be managed more easily. In order to minimize the impact on production and tax the user(s) with extra steps, you can use a third-party splitting tool that can be called from the Command Line. One such option that has worked well is PDFSplitter from CoolUtils

One way to automate this process is to use PDFSplitter’s command line ability in conjunction with SimpleIndex’s Pre-processing function. For simplicity let’s consider a 600 page PDF with a filename generated at the time of scanning using indexes provided on a coversheet or keyed by an operator. The goal now is to take that large file and perform a full-text conversion on it.

Our SimpleIndex job, Full Page OCR.sic let’s say, launches and before getting to work calls PDFSplitter from the Pre-processing step with a command such as

PDFSplitter.exe “C:\Images\Smith – John – Medical History.pdf” C:\Images\Pages\ -cp 100

PDFSplitter will run and break that document every 100 pages creating 6 PDFs in the folder C:\Images\Pages. It maintains the original filename, simply adding “001-100” and so on to the name. After PDFSplitter is complete the Full Page OCR job begins its process and, given that the original filename is still part of the split files’ naming schema, it can produce one full-text PDF in the final output folder.

Related Wiki Help Pages:

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Reset SharePoint Login Information

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete SharePoint reference.

The first time you run a SimpleIndex Job Configuration that uploads to SharePoint it will ask for your SharePoint User Name and Password. Once you enter this it saves this information and doesn’t ask for it again. If you need to change the User Name or Password for SharePoint please follow the instructions below.

Open the Windows File Explorer and navigate to this location:

C:\Users\WINDOWSUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Simple_Software\DefaultDomain_Path_3aa0dedu1iaszsodvugr0hxbpamae3ew

The WINDOWSUSERNAME section will be the Windows User Name that you login to Windows with when you run the SimpleIndex software.

The “DefaultDomain_Path_3aa0dedu1iaszsodvugr0hxbpamae3ew” section will vary, but will always start with “DefaultDomain”.

Once that folder is found delete all of the files and folders from this location.

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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 OCR languages support. You can learn more about it and download additional language libraries HERE. And you can check and add more OCR languages libraries supported with Tesseract on your station here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\Tesseract\v3.02\tessdata

SimpleIndex Pro and SimpleIndex OCR are using FineReader engine. It has one of the largest libraries of supported OCR languages. You can check OCR languages supported with FineReader on your station here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\OCRLanguages.txt

Abkhaz
Adyghe
Afrikaans
Agul
Albanian
Altaic
Armenian Eastern
Armenian Grabar
Armenian Western
Awar
Aymara
Azeri Cyrillic
Azeri Latin
Bashkir
Basque
Belarusian
Bemba
Blackfoot
Breton
Bugotu
Bulgarian
Buryat
Catalan
Chamorro
Chechen
Chukcha
Chuvash
Corsican
Crimean Tatar
Croatian
Crow
Czech
Danish
Dargwa
Dungan
Dutch Belgian
Dutch Standard
English
English Australian
English Belize
English Canadian
English Caribbean
English Ireland
English Jamaica
English Law
English Medical
English New Zealand
English Philippines
English South Africa
English Trinidad
English United Kingdom
English United States
English Zimbabwe
Eskimo Cyrillic
Eskimo Latin
Esperanto
Estonian
Even
Evenki
Faeroese
Fijian
Finnish
French
French Belgian
French Canadian
French Luxembourg
French Monaco
French Standard
French Swiss
Frisian
Friulian
Gaelic Scottish
Gagauz
Galician
Ganda
German
German Austrian
German Law
German Liechtenstein
German Luxembourg
German Medical
German New Spelling
German New Spelling Law
German New Spelling Medical
German Standard
German Swiss
Greek
Guarani
Hani
Hausa
Hawaiian
Hungarian
Icelandic
Ido
Indonesian
Ingush
Interlingua
Irish
Italian
Italian Standard
Italian Swiss
Kabardian
Kalmyk
Karachay Balkar
Karakalpak
Kasub
Kawa
Kazakh
Khakas
Khanty
Kikuyu
Kirgiz
Kongo
Koryak
Kpelle
Kumyk
Kurdish

Lak
Lappish
Latin
Latvian
Latvian Gothic
Lezgin
Lithuanian
Lithuanian Classic
Luba
Macedonian
Malagasy
Malay Brunei Darussalam
Malay Malaysian
Malinke
Maltese
Mansi
Maori
Mari
Maya
Miao
Minankabaw
Mohawk
Mongol
Mordvin
Nahuatl
Nenets
Nivkh
Nogay
Norwegian Bokmal
Norwegian Nynorsk
Null
Nyanja
Occidental
Ojibway
Old English
Old French
Old German
Old Italian
Old Spanish
Ossetic
Papiamento
Pidgin English
Polish
Portuguese Brazilian
Portuguese Standard
Provencal
Quechua
Rhaeto Romanic
Romanian
Romanian Moldavia
Romany
Ruanda
Rundi
Russian
Russian Moldavia
Russian Old Spelling
Samoan
Selkup
Serbian Cyrillic
Serbian Latin
Shona
Sioux
Slovak
Slovenian
Somali
Sorbian
Sotho
Spanish
Spanish Argentina
Spanish Bolivia
Spanish Chile
Spanish Colombia
Spanish Costa Rica
Spanish Dominican Republic
Spanish Ecuador
Spanish El Salvador
Spanish Guatemala
Spanish Honduras
Spanish Mexican
Spanish Modern Sort
Spanish Nicaragua
Spanish Panama
Spanish Paraguay
Spanish Peru
Spanish Puerto Rico
Spanish Traditional Sort
Spanish Uruguay
Spanish Venezuela
Sunda
Swahili
Swazi
Swedish
Swedish Finland
Tabassaran
Tagalog
Tahitian
Tajik
Tatar
Tinpo
Tongan
Tswana
Tun
Turkish
Turkmen
Tuvin
Udmurt
Uighur Cyrillic
Uighur Latin
Ukrainian
Uzbek Cyrillic
Uzbek Latin
Visayan
Welsh
Wolof
Xhosa
Yakut
Yiddish
Zapotec
Zulu

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How to Fix SharePoint Login Issues

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete SharePoint reference.

If login issues occur when connecting to SharePoint or it continually prompts for a login please try this solution.

Instructions:

  1. Search for “regedit” on your computer.
  2. Navigate to this folder in the Registry Editor window: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\SimpleIndex\Misc
  3. In the right pane of the Registry Editor window Right Click and select New>String Value
  4. Set the name of the file to this: DisableSharePointForms
  5. Double click on the “DisableSharePointForms” registry key, set the Value to “1” (Zero) and click OK.
  6. Run again and re-enter the login information.
  7. This will automatically logon to SharePoint without requesting the login information each upload.
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Oracle database is slow to respond

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Autofill reference.

When connecting to an Oracle database, you may experience very slow responses when loading the list of Tables or Field in the configuration wizard, or when performing Autofill and Export using the Oracle connection.

This can be caused by a variety of issues:

  • Check User Permissions. Make sure the user has access to the required tables and schemas. Users with access to all schemas may experience significant delays when loading table lists as there can be many thousands of tables they have access to. Try switching to a user account whose schema only includes the tables used by SimpleIndex.
  • Slow connection between the client and the Oracle server. Check if other Oracle applications on this workstation also experience slowness.
  • Issues with client installation. Reinstall or update your Oracle client and ODBC drivers.

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How to emulate Server behavior in the client

Please refer to the Wiki Documentation for the complete Unattended Processing reference.

Due to licensing restrictions, there are some functions in SimpleIndex that behave slightly differently when running in server mode than when running interactively. Mostly the only difference is in speed but sometimes it can be difficult to tell why output is different when running unattended.

The biggest difference between client and server is with barcode configurations. Server processing always uses the DTK engine unless the Advanced Barcode Server license is enabled.

Some image conversion and processing options may also behave slightly differently, possibly affecting OCR. You can set the interactive mode to process images in the same way as the server mode by updating a registry key. You can find instructions on this below.

Instructions:

  1. Search for “regedit” on your computer.
  2. Navigate to this folder in the Registry Editor window: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\SimpleIndex\Misc
  3. In the right pane of the Registry Editor window Right Click and select New>String Value
  4. Set the name of the file to this: UseServer
  5. Double click on the “UseServer” registry key, set the Value to “1” (One) and click OK.
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