Heres how you’re free to use OneNote to OCR anything on your machine.
OneNote is one of the overlooked gems in recent versions of Microsoft Office.
One way it is better is its high quality optical character recognition (OCR) engine.
OneNote takes this further, and instantly OCRs any text in images you add.
Then, you could use this text easily and copy it from the image.
Lets see how this works and how you could use OneNote as the ultimate OCR.
yo Note: This feature is available in OneNote 2007 and 2010.
There are many different ways you’ve got the option to add items to OCR into OneNote.
In OneNote 2010, opt for Insert tab, and then choose Picture.
In OneNote 2007, snag the Insert menu, select Picture, and then choose From File.
For these cases, the Screen Clipping option is very useful.
Now, click and drag over anything you want to add to OneNote.
Here were selecting the title of this article.
Insert a fileYoure not limited to pictures; OneNote can even OCR anything in most files on your box.
you’re free to add files directly in OneNote 2010 by selecting File Printout in the Insert tab.
In OneNote 2007, grab the Insert menu and choose Files as Printout.
Choose the file you want to add to OneNote in the dialog.
Select Insert, and OneNote will pause momentarily as it processes the file.
you’re able to also send any file directly to OneNote via the OneNote virtual printer.
OneNote automatically did an OCR scan on anything you inserted into OneNote.
Select Make Text in Image Searchable and then double-check the correct language is selected.
Now, you’ve got the option to copy text from the Picture.
Simply right-opt for picture, and select Copy Text from Picture.
And heres the text that OneNote found in this picture:
Not bad, huh?
This works the exact same in OneNote 2007.
In OneNote 2010, you might also edit the text OneNote has saved in the image from the OCR.
To do this, right-choose the item and select Edit Alt Text.
Here is the window to edit alternate text.
Searching
OneNotes OCR engine is very useful for finding specific pictures you have saved in OneNote.
Notice how it highlights the search term even in the image!
This works the same in OneNote 2007.
Notice how it highlighted How-to in a shot of the header image in our favorite website.
Conclusion
OneNote is a very useful OCR tool, and can help you capture text from just about anything.
