Office OneNote 2010: Extract Text From Image [OCR]

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OneNote 2010 is one of the best application when it comes to note-taking, it gives a flamboyant look of your notes, includes lots of features; from recording videos to drawing, creating tables, etc. One of its feature which has been overlooked is the ability to recognize text from images. It has inherent OCR (Optical Character Reader), which immediately extract text from any image file format.

To start off with, launch OneNote 2010, and drag & drop any image file containing text into OneNote.

image

Now right-click the image, and select Copy Text from Picture.


copy text 1

Paste it anywhere on the OneNote sheet. It will automatically extract text from image as can be seen in the screenshot below.

text copy

OneNote has a efficient OCR, but when an image contains very small or concocting text, then it may not extract it properly.

You can also checkout Inserting audio & video in OneNote2010.

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  • James

    The online application Free OCR allows transforming the contents of an image file in a text output format. Though Microsoft Word is not supported currently.

  • Mark

    I am trying to convert a picture of text that is a list of contacts. The software worked once when I tested it here is a sample of what it produces from a list of contacts in english listed below. This software was bought to do this which it is supposed to do easily. It was a total waste of money and cost me two days of frustration and lost time from my business trying to make use of this…..can you read this english listing of contacts…..TOTAL GARBAGE !!!
    ættttufllô.Oa I. a
    .__flc _.1
    ..a a..e
    •fl.WdflI
    eaS Ã] SLO.St SIWI 4
    — —*
    . neat eran..,
    ;e, ng a rn
    4 &*tt Øt Il’t
    ., ..
    t atS.er. a
    ‘a ta. e» n .14,-rn.
    r.. .aa
    attn »,,. #k1ALI .11,t..e1.14a..tlC
    __t. an ate
    Caper ea attn-se
    — .t1n4_
    aa nate ,:.. a..,- get……
    —.—
    an San on-ta. •t,1S.
    ,,__ — tanes
    ——-‘——.—
    -etna. .‘ Cl 1a..e
    –.
    .tœe Cat_a.a . .ãg_aNeea,, i.e.s
    . ata.. ria.?
    e. “Wa. ..pea … Ma-Mn
    .,
    eILIW’ Ita-fMI. tn (lita. •II!4III
    -‘eq—a.
    a-a,. a-s. Ca-es .Øtata
    ‘an. earn_ag a.a Sits
    sa rflr.fl a..
    nW.ab.,l1. .04,-a
    a. rI,ata•
    n-_c a.% , r.’.-..
    _-_ ntSa
    -in.

  • Ayan Karmakar

    I really do not know how to thank you, But I must say that, these advices are very useful to me, this feature made my 22 days work in 5 minutes. I’ve been looking for OCR in net, but I did not find one. It was really helpful. ………..Thanks.

  • Ayan Karmakar

    I really do not know how to thank you, But I must say that, these advices are very useful to me, this feature made my 22 days work in 5 minutes. I’ve been looking for OCR in net, but I did not find one. It was really helpful. ………..Thanks.

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  • ALLEN OLATUNDE

    Thanks for the OCR info. It is excellent.

  • Dave

    It is awesome, but when image is little more difficult, I use GT Text to copy the text. [http://gttext.googlecode.com].
    OCR is a technology very sensible with color images.

  • DanglingPointer

    @mark, sometimes, the picture is encoded in such away that OCR doesn’t work and returns you the garbage value. Having said that, you can always Alt+PrntScr to capture the outer most layer or (since you are using MS OneNote), press WindowKey+S to snip the region of picture u want to perform OCR on and try again. In my experience, OneNote performs OCR op perfectly fine with Roman characters and you don’t need any other app to perform this op!

    • Rajan

      am also having same problem. am followed all-those instruction’s still i got same text like….

      •gIIL&Q4l? tI1/tO49IV1I g . .g024, k L3444 tL11t t Q4LJ k &

      &4t. ixu to •U üm eKanv&a,1 to o 44 4ht fw, &t,uwdftj, to t &tt t Ln4 nuu wn

      4)0g1, °! j2AhttiJ411tQtI.t
      to •trwt’i,
      •gM.Z C)QAlfihlCtt , t€a ua 44La a t. iL i.fl. Oi

      •i’two3 4 .e4tJ catanait, cm? fSj w&a k & L tL g La
      a wat can i do?????

  • Radim

    Adobe Acrobat X do OCR nicely. One more app – http://www.boxoft.com/screen-ocr/

  • Radim

    @Dave: how to use GT Text … I looked at it here [http://code.google.com/p/gttext/downloads/list], but can NOT do OCR. Please tell me simple steps. Thanks.

    • Dave

      You have to download the program, and paste the image in the box with control+V
      aferwards press the icon of extracting the text and it is copied in the clipboard

  • Black hawk

    Thanks!

  • Thomas

    Thanks for this. A question – some of the pictures I need text from have hyphens at the end of the lines (where the word is split over the lines) but ON doesnt pick these up… is there a way of getting it to? Thanks in advance for any advice!