OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition, a technology used to convert scanned documents, PDF files, and digital photos into editable formats.

Learn more about OCR and ABBYY's technologies.

Currently, two interface languages are available — English and Russian. If you want to change the interface language, click on the appropriate language in the right-hand panel at the top.

Yes. ABBYY FineReader Online has been designed for basic OCR tasks. If you are looking for a professional OCR solution, then ABBYY FineReader Professional Edition is the best choice. ABBYY FineReader 10 Professional Edition offers the following features not available in FineReader Online:

• Enhanced recognition accuracy and layout retention
• Adaptive Document Recognition Technology (ADRT® 2.0) — re-creation of a document's logical structure and formatting (footnotes, page numbering, headers, footers, captions to images/tables/diagrams, table of contents, hierarchy of headings)
• Built-in WYSIWYG text editor
• 186 OCR languages (including Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, and Thai)
• Area Editor
• Direct export to a variety of applications
• ABBYY Screenshot Reader — a bonus application for registered users

Learn more about ABBYY FineReader.

U.S. Patent Nos. 5,258,855, 5,369,508, 5,625,465, 5,768,416 and 6,094,505.

This is a paid-for service. To be able to use it, you have to buy page credits from our online store. Please see the FineReader Online Price List for the prices.

You can buy page credits in our online store.

Promo codes are distributed as part of special promotional campaigns and enable you to recognize a certain number of pages. Your page credits become available once you activate your promo code.

With ABBYY FineReader Online you can recognize files in any of the following formats:

• *.jpg (*.jpeg)
• *.tif (*.tiff)
• *.pcx
• *.dcx
• *.bmp
• *.png
• *.djvu, *.djv
• *.pdf

You can choose one of the following output document formats to perform online OCR:

• Microsoft Word Document (*.doc)
• Microsoft Excel Worksheet (*.xls)
• Plain Text (*.txt)
• RTF Document (*.rtf)
• PDF Document (*.pdf)
• PDF/A Document (*.pdf)

ABBYY FineReader Online can process documents in 37 languages, including Russian. You can select up to 3 languages at a time if you need to process a text written in more than one language. If you need more OCR languages, please consider buying the desktop version of ABBYY FineReader, which can process texts in 186 languages (including Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, and Thai) .

Once a document is successfully processed and saved in a format of your choice, you can download it from your task history. There you can see the status of your task:

• "In progress" means that you need to wait a little while the server is processing your file;
• "Done" means that the file has been processed and the results are available for download;
• "Error" means that the system failed to process the file;
• "Poor OCR quality. No page credits used" means that there are too many errors in the resulting documents and you have not been charged for the task.

You can also download the results by clicking on the link in the e-mail message you received from the service. Clicking on this link gives you immediate access to your recognized document. This download method becomes available when you select "Send me a download link" on the FineReader Online page. The server will store the recognition results for 72 hours.

Yes. For instance, a poor fax, a low-contrast scan, or a document image with a lot of speckles can cause recognition problems. Skewed scans and speckled images are more difficult to process and errors are likely.

No. To edit a recognized document, you need to download it and then open it in any suitable application for spell-checking and further polishing. It is also possible to edit a recognized document directly in the desktop versions of ABBYY FineReader.

Yes. ABBYY FineReader Online recognizes digital photos as well as scanned documents. The service offers special image pre-processing features that help to eliminate speckles and skew on the original image. However, poor quality of digital images can cause recognition problems and errors.

For professional recognition of digital photos, take advantage of ABBYY FineReader Professional Edition, a desktop OCR solution which provides advanced automatic and manual image pre-processing features.

In ABBYY FineReader Online, recognition areas are selected automatically.

This service will only handle printed texts.

If there are too many errors, try the following:

• Make sure that you have selected the right language.
• If you are attempting to process a photo, try taking a new picture.
• If you are attempting to process a scanned document, make sure that the right scanning options are selected.

To scan a document:

• Select 300 dpi resolution for texts printed in 10 pt fonts or larger.
• Select 400-600 dpi resolution for texts printed in 9 pt fonts or smaller.

Adjust the brightness:

• If the letters are too dark or blend together, increase the brightness setting (i.e. make the image lighter).
• If the letters are too thin or torn apart, lower the brightness setting (i.e. make the image darker).

The version of the Flash Player installed on your computer may be incompatible with our image loader. Please update your Flash Player or disable the Flash mode in the image loader by clicking the button in the top right corner of the "Recognize" page.

Please write to us at support@abbyyonline.com.