Fixes for the most problems you may encounter with SimpleIndex
Process Monitor/ProcMon Instructions
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.
- Download the process monitor from Microsoft by clicking HERE and then clicking Download Process Monitor.
- Unzip the “ProcessMonitor.zip” file and save it to any location on the computer running SimpleIndex.
- Run the “Procmon.exe”
- Once the program opens go to the File Menu and uncheck “Capture Events”
- Go to the Edit menu and select “Clear Display”
- Go to the File Menu and check “Capture Events”
- Immediately run SimpleIndex with the process that is having the issue exactly as you normally would and let it run until the issue occurs.
- Once the issue occurs go back to the Process Monitor window and then to the File Menu and uncheck “Capture Events”
- Go to the File Menu and select save.
- Use all the defaults to save to a folder that you can easily access and name the file with today’s date.
- Send us this file for review.
Error in Scanning Batch 743
If you get an error that says “Error in Scanning Batch. 743 – Unable to create or activate a new instance of ‘Simple.FileEditor.Client.ImageViewer’.” after running previous batches successfully then the SimpleIndex Windows Layout is corrupt.
To resolve locate this folder in Windows Exporer/My Computer:
C:\Users\<Windows User Name>\AppData\Local\Simple_Folder
(<Windows User Name> = Windows user currently logged into the computer that is receiving this error)
Then delete this folder and reopen SimpleIndex.
Stop/Turn Off Image Deletion when Blank is Recognized
In certain cases you will need to be able to read that a page is blank, but not actually want to delete this page. This is especially useful if you want to use a page that isn’t completely blank as a document separator, where the page is always smaller than the rest of the pages in the batch. You can set-up an Autonumber increment to only go up a number when a blank page is read, but not delete that page for later processing.
To set the option to keep a page that is read blank follow the instructions below (SimpleIndex v9.0.30 and higher).
- Right click on the SimpleIndex Job Configuration file (.sic format) that you would like to set this option for and Edit in Notepad or another text editor of your choice. Select “Open With…” then select Notepad.
- Do a search for “KEEP_DELETED” until you find this:
<KEEP_DELETED>false</KEEP_DELETED> - Change the word “false” to “true”
- Save the Job Configuration then close the text editor.
TIF File Not Opening After Save with SimpleIndex
If when scanning with SimpleIndex and outputting TIF files you are producing files that are not viewable and produce this error in Windows Photo Viewer then the “Color & Grayscale Pages” setting in the Compression Settings needs to be changed. You can find the instructions for changing this option below.
1. Go to the Scan menu
2. Select Set Compression Options
3. Change the Color & Grayscale pages drop down from JPEG to either JPEG7 or JPEG 2000
4. Click OK
5. Save the Job Configuration
Command Line Sample
When using the Simple Software products it can be beneficial to run the software from a command line script. With this you can run other Simple Software Job configurations or Windows Batch Files (.bat) or Task Manager or other command line methods automatically.
You can find sample formats of the command lines for Simple Software products below.
SimpleIndex:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\SimpleIndex.exe” /c:”Path to job file”
SimpleSend:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\SimpleSend.exe” “Path to job file” /hide /run
SimpleQB:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\qb\SimpleQB.exe” “Path to job file” /hide /run
/hide and /run in the SimpleSend and SimpleQB examples above hide any windows from being displayed and automatically runs the process respectively.
Enable Post-Process when Input Folder is Empty
When you have multiple Job Configurations running in tandem with the Post-Process command line running one after there other there can be occasions where a Job Configuration earlier in the chain doesn’t have any images in the Input folder. When this happens a prompt occurs that must be clicked to proceed to the the next Job Configuration. When running unattended this can cause issues when the process stops for this prompt. This can be turned off in the Job Configuration’s XML settings.
Instructions for suppressing prompt to continue when Input folder is empty:
- 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:
<POSTPROCEMPTY> - Set the value between from “True” to “False”. It should look like this:
<POSTPROCEMPTY>False</POSTPROCEMPTY> - Save and close the file.
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:
- Close SimpleIndex entirely
- Open the Windows Registry by going to the Windows Search and searching for “RegEdit”
- Go to this location in the Registry Folder Tree: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\SimpleIndex\Misc
- In the right section of the Registry window Right Click in the white space and select New>String Value
- Name the new key “StopFile”
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:
- Open the Windows Registry Editor by searching for “regedit”
- Find this location in the Registry Editor:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\SimpleIndex\Misc - Right click in the right and select New>String Value
- Name the key the following: GUIDBatchNames
- Open the key and set the value to the following: 1
Change the OCR Font or Type
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.
Instructions for setting OCR Font:
1. Right click on the .sic file and select Open With a text editor (Notepad, Wordpad, etc.)
2. Find <OCR_TEXT_TYPE>. If you can’t find <OCR_TEXT_TYPE> then add the following as the last row in the text file:
<OCR_TEXT_TYPE>#</OCR_TEXT_TYPE>
3. Change the number in between: <OCR_TEXT_TYPE>#</OCR_TEXT_TYPE>
4. Number of desired font:
- 0 Normal
- 1 Typewriter
- 2 Dotmatrix
- 3 Index
- 5 OCR A
- 6 OCR B
- 7 MICR E13B
- 8 MICR CMC7
- 9 Gothic
- 10 To Be Detected
5. Close and save file
Advanced Custom Settings
The following options have been provided to address specific processing scenarios. Since these are infrequently used, they are set via the registry instead of adding them to the configuration settings.
These settings are global and will affect all users and jobs on your workstation. Please contact support if you require the ability to configure any of these settings in the job settings.
To modify any of these settings, first open the registry editor. If you do not know what this means, please contact support and do not continue further. Improperly editing the registry can corrupt your operating system.
These settings are located under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\SimpleIndex\Misc (for 32-systems) and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\SimpleIndex\Misc (for 64-systems).
Create a String key using the name given on the first line and the desired value. All settings use String keys. SimpleIndex must be restarted for these changes to take effect.
ScanAdmin
0 (default) – Administrator password is not required to access scanner settings
1 – User must enter Administrator password (if set) to access scanner settings
UpperCaseFileExtensions
0 (default) – File extensions are saved in lower case (*.tif, *.pdf, etc.)
1 – File extensions are saved in upper case (*.TIF, *.PDF, etc.)
DisableMaxRecs
Some databases (such as FileMaker) do not support the MaxRecs property which limits the number of rows returned in a query.
0 (default) – Queries are limited by the value specified in Max Files/Batch
1 – All matching records will be returned by the query
StopFile
Filename for the “stop file” created during import and export process to prevent other Simple Software or custom processes from attempting to read or write to these folders at the same time. Can be modified to meet the requirements of other applications or to allow for processing a file that happens to be called “STOPFILE.TXT”.
STOPFILE.TXT (default)
StopFileAge
If a process terminates abnormally during the import or export steps, the stop file may remain in the input or output folder, preventing future batches from being processed. Value may need to be increased if processing very large batches, or it can be decreased to restart terminated jobs more quickly.
120 (default) – Stop file will be removed automatically if it is more than 120 minutes old
PDFWaitTime
Number of CPU cycles to wait before returning the cursor to the default field after loading a PDF file. Acrobat and other PDF readers automatically place the cursor in the PDF document after opening. In order to place the cursor in the default index field, the application must wait until the PDF file finishes rendering and then place the cursor back in the field. Since the load time varies based on the size of the file, network speed, etc., this value can be increased to ensure the default field is always selected after navigating PDF files.
10000 (default)
UseDBQuotes
Substitutes quotes for brackets to indicate field or table names that contain spaces when formatting queries. For compatibility with some database systems.
0 (default) – place brackets [] around field or table names with spaces
1 – place “quotes” around field or table names with spaces ResampleTIFF
0 (default) – Imported TIFFs keep their original resolution
1 – Imported TIFFs are resampled using the PDF X and Y resolution setting
DBTimeout
Allows you to modify the amount of time to wait for a database transaction before timing out. Useful when dealing with large data sets or slow network connections where the timeout occurs before the transaction is complete.
30 (default) – timeout after 30 seconds
ConvertWithXFI
Some format conversions may fail during the import step. Use this option to switch to the alternate import SDK (slightly slower) that is used when running as a server to resolve these issues.
0 (default) – Use default method for importing files
1 – Use the XFI imaging engine when importing files
UseMSWMVParser
Use this to fix issues with WMV video playback on some systems.
0 (default) – Use the default WMV playback method
1 – Use the Microsoft WMV playback method
AnnotationFont
Change the default font used for imprinting and other annotations. Indicate the font name as it appears in font selectors like the one in MS Word.
Arial (default) – Use the Arial font when imprinting or annotating
BarcodeHeight
Mimimum distance relative to height between 1D barcodes (1-10). Lower the value to find barcodes that are very narrow relative to their height.
4 (default)
DilateBarcodes
Performs a dilate on the images before attempting to read barcodes with the DTK engine. This can help with detection of barcodes when scans are very light.
0 (default) – Read original image
1 – Read original image; if no barcodes are found, dilate the imate and read again
DeleteBlankPDF
Blank page deletion does not work with PDF files that have been converted from electronic documents instead of scans. Black & White scans saved as PDF files have roughly the same file size as comparable TIFF images and the same blank page thresholds will work. If all PDFs being imported are from B&W scans, you can set this value to 1 to enable blank page deletion for these.
0 (default) – Blank page deletion will be ignored for PDF files
1 – Use the Min File Size threshold for PDF files as well as TIFF images
AutoSaveFiles
Automatically save annotations, cropping and other changes to image files when you click “Save Index”, avoiding the extra prompt.
0 (default) – Changes to files will prompt the user asking whether to save changes or not
1 – Changes to files will be saved automatically when the user clicks “Save Index”
GUIDBatchNames
When running several jobs on the same computer with a short timer interval, the date/time format of the batch names is not always unique. Use this setting to generate a GUID for the batch names that will always be unique.
0 (default) – Batch names will be formatted YYYY-MM-DD@HHMMSS
1 – Batch names will be generated with a GUID
UnsavedIndexColor
Allows you to change the default color for unsaved field values from Blue to any color you like. To set this you must get the Hexadecimal RGB value for the color you want and convert it to an Integer.
16711680 (default) – Unsaved index values will appear in Blue
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.
Fixes for Service not Correctly Running
If the Service stops and isn’t running properly there can be a variety of different causes for this. You can follow the procedures below to fix this in most cases.
Check Event Log, which is here:
Administrative Tools>Event Viewer>Windows Logs>Application
Then select “Filter Current Log…” on the right
and in the “Event sources:” field drop down pick these: SimpleIndex, SimpleIndex Service & SimpleIndexService (and anything else that says SimpleIndex)
Look at the errors, which will tell you why it’s not working.
Find the Temp folder for SimpleIndex and delete any batches that are there after stopping the Service in the SimpleIndex Service Control and Options Panel
Clear Registry of the Temp Files
HKEY_USERS\(User ID for the User Running the Service)\Software\SimpleIndex\
Then delete the folders for the names of the Configurations that are not starting in the Service Control Panel
Stop Autorun When Double Clicking Configuration
SimpleIndex jobs can be launched from an icon, just like opening a Word document saved on your desktop. However when you do this the default behavior is to automatically run the job file once it opens in SimpleIndex. If you just want to open the job without running it, follow these instructions:
1. Create a shortcut to the configuration by right clicking on the configuration file and selecting “Create shortcut”
2. Right click on the Shortcut that was just created and saved and select “Properties”
3. In the “Target” field put the following:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\SimpleIndex.exe” /c:”<Full Path to Configuration file>” /m
Example:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex\SimpleIndex.exe” /c:”C:\Images\test.sic” /m
Workstation Activation in the Concurrent Serial Number Field
If you are getting really weird activations errors where it says the license has already been activated the client has probably put the Workstation serial code in the Concurrent spot that is in the Wizard.
To fix this go to the registry (regedit) here:
HLM\Software\Wow6432Node\SimpleIndex\Registration
Then delete the key called Serial
Sharing Violation – Anti-Virus
If you get Sharing Violations during the processing, usually with the Temp folder, and you can’t figure out why it is probably the Anti-Virus software. Turn off the real time virus scan and it should fix it.
Overlap of SimpleView Viewer in SimpleIndex Display
Occasionally on certain Windows displays the SimpleView viewer sub-window in SimpleIndex will extend over the Index fields causing the user to not be able to interact with them or click Save All/Save Index or use the Mouse Actions. This seems to happen more with ultra-high resolution monitors like a 4K monitors or the Surface Pro. You will see something like this:
The fix for this is relatively simple by using the High DPI Scaling in Windows. You can find the instructions for this below.
Windows 10 Instructions:
- Open Windows File Explorer and go to this folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex
- Find the SimpleIndex.exe
- Right click on the SimpleIndex.exe and then select Properties
- Go to the Compatibility tab
- Click the button called “Change high DPI settings”
- Check the boxes labelled “Use this setting to fix scaling problems for this program instead of the one in Settings” and “Override high DPI scaling behavior. Scaling performed by:”
Windows 7 Instructions:
- Open Windows File Explorer and go to this folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\SimpleIndex
- Find the SimpleIndex.exe
- Right click on the SimpleIndex.exe and then select Properties
- Go to the Compatibility tab
- Check “Disable display scaling on high DPI settings”
Once you make this change reopen SimpleIndex and you display will be correct.
Notes: After enabling this setting there might some oddities with the toolbars and navigation buttons, but they are all readable and working, and the menus work. The old job settings has several issues with this, but it has been replaced with the wizard which does not.
Sort Lists Error – HexUniControl Module
If you have an error when manually changing the values in a List type index field that says “HexUniControl” then it’s an issue with the way SimpleIndex sorts the values in the list that the drop down is accessing. This sorting needs to be turned off to avoid this error. The instructions to turn this list sorting off are below. Instructions:
1. Right click on the configuration file and select Open With>Note Pad or Open With>Word Pad or any text editor.
2. Search for this term: SORT_LISTS
3. Find the entry, which should look like this: <SORT_LISTS>true</SORT_LISTS>
4. Set the true value to false.
Troubleshooting SharePoint Permissions Issues
The problem was being caused by the fact that the root site on the server did not grant the users read access.
For example, imagine they are trying to upload to:
” http://server/sites/mysite/test.pdf ”
The user has full permissions on mysite, but if they try to access http://server/ they get permission denied. Even though the user can upload to mysite, they cannot upload with SimpleIndex because the client objects require permission on the root site.
Granting the users at least read access to the root site at http://server/ resolves the issue.
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
Viewer Reset for SimpleIndex
If you have any issues with the SimpleView viewer within SimpleIndex not displaying properly or the grid size being off you can reset it by doing the following.
1. Go to the Registry by searching for regedit
2. Locate this folder path:
hkey_current_user\software\vb and vba applications\simpleindex
OR
hkey_current_user\software\vb and vba program settings\simpleindex
3. Delete the SimpleIndex folder from that path, which deletes all the saved user settings and reverts back to default.
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