Recognition

ABBYY FineReader uses Optical Character Recognition technologies to convert document images into editable text. Before performing OCR, the program analyzes the structure of the entire document and detects the areas that contain text, barcodes, images, and tables.

For details, see Adjusting Area Shapes and Area Borders.

ABBYY FineReader documents are by default recognized automatically under current program settings.

Tip. You can disable automatic analysis and OCR for newly added images from the Scan/Open tab of the Options dialog box (Tools>Options…).

To achieve the best OCR quality, select the appropriate options for the recognition language, recognition mode, and recognized text print type.

For details, see Tips for Improving OCR Quality.

In some cases, the OCR process can be started manually. For example, if you disabled automatic recognition, manually selected areas on an image, or changed the following settings in the Options dialog box (Tools>Options…):

The recognition language on the Document tab.
The document print type on the Document tab.
The recognition settings on the Read tab.
Font matching on the Advanced tab.

To launch the OCR process manually:

Click the Read button on the main toolbar, or
Select Read from the Document menu

Tip. To recognize the selected area or page, use the appropriate options on the Page and Areas menus, or use the shortcut menu.