You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.

Forum Discussion

Sincostan's avatar
Sincostan
Explorer | Level 4
3 years ago

OCR without mobile app

I have a family account and want to use OCR to create searchable PDF files. I want to use the following workflow:   1. Use Brother ADS 2800w to scan paper (German language) and send PDF file to a...
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kls144's avatar
kls144
Explorer | Level 3

Hi Walter - thanks for your response. I would like to search over a large set of pre-existing handwritten/printed then scanned PDFs that were not scanned in via Dropbox's mobile document scanner. Is there a subscription plan that includes the functionality to search over PDFs generated outside of the Dropbox mobile app? 

 

I'm left unclear on what full text search encompasses as it relates to PDFs based on this list: https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/sort-preview/search-content

 

The tech team did a great job of laying out the various PDF formats and how they can differ for searchability:  https://dropbox.tech/machine-learning/using-machine-learning-to-index-text-from-billions-of-images I'm left with the impression they addressed this in 2018. My use case is focused on what they call "Page has text, but only in the form of an image"

 

I'm currently a Plus prescriber. Thank you

kls144's avatar
kls144
Explorer | Level 3
3 years ago

Bumping for Walter - thank you for the help!

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
    3 years ago

    Hi kls144, thanks for the nudge on this!

     

    I believe only scans generated by the built-in scanner can be searched using OCR at the moment while handwritten documents are also not detected at this time.

     

    I'm double-checking this with the team as well and I'll let you know more when I hear back from them.

     

     

     

    • kls144's avatar
      kls144
      Explorer | Level 3
      3 years ago

      HI Walter - did the engineering team ever confirm one way or another? Thank you

      • Walter's avatar
        Walter
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
        3 years ago

        Thanks for the nudge on this kls144 

         

        I got an update from the team and indeed what I previously mentioned seems to be expected behavior. Only docs scanned by Dropbox have OCR, not all documents uploaded to Dropbox. 

         

        I hope this clears things up!

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