ABBYY FineReader

Softonic review

Digitize paper documents

Paper documents have two main problems - you can't easily edit them and they are delicate. ABBYY FineReader is designed to easily solve this problem by digitizing paper media. It can also handle PDF documents, giving you the freedom to do what you want with them.

ABBYY FineReader is an advanced program that uses optical character recognition on scans or photos for text, layout, tables and even the language of the document. The results can be edited within the program, or exported to Word.

Compatible with all scanners, and cameras too, ABBYY FineReader is extremely easy to use. It detects any connected devices, so you can scan in a document or choose an image from a camera or your hard drive. The image is then read, and two windows open. One shows the original image, and the other the digitized editable version.

The performance of ABBYY FineReader is impressive. We tested a document photographed with an iPhone, and it was converted perfectly, with no errors. There are sometimes issues with images, but in general ABBYY FineReader will give you extremely good results. You can export files to PDF, DOC, XLS or HTML.

If you want to effectively digitize paper doncuments, ABBYY FineReader is an excellent and easy to use choice.

Author's review

ABBYY® FineReader® 14 is an all-in-one PDF and OCR software application for increased productivity when working with PDFs and scanned paper documents. It supports business professionals from various departments in coping with a variety of daily document-related tasks. Whether they need to access the information in scans and PDFs in order to find relevant insights, exchange feedback with colleagues or quickly detect crucial text changes in two versions of the same document – ABBYY FineReader 14 makes documents actionable.

Convert PDFs and Scans

• Scan and convert into editable documents (such as Microsoft® Office or Apache® OpenOffice® Writer formats) for further editing and re-use. Over 190 languagessupported.
• Check and correct recognition results with side-by-side comparison of original and recognised text and practical verification tool.
• Prepare documents for digital archiving by converting them into searchable PDF and PDF/A formats. Apply compression to reduce file size and save storage space.
• Collect and consume information on the go – use your Smartphone as a portable scanner to capture documents, or convert documents into convenient e-book formats for reading on the go.

Edit and Comment PDFs

• Convenient PDF viewer that allows you to start working with any type of PDF, even scanned, without additional steps – OCR is applied automatically when necessary.
• Collaborate on documents – use versatile commenting anddrawing tools to share and visualise feedback on a document with your team.
• Edit and modify PDF documents, correct small typos in both digital and scanned PDFs directly in the document, rearrange or add pages, edit document properties (metadata), fill out PDF forms.
• Extract information such as text and tables from any type of PDF, even scanned, without additional conversion.
• Protect documents and information by adding passwords, digital signatures, redacting sensitive information or removing metadata.
• Create PDFs from a scanner, from Office documents or from any application with a print function.

Compare Documents (available only in FineReader 14 Corporate and Enterprise)

• Quickly identify crucial text changes between two versions of the same document, even if they are in different formats, i.e. a scan (PDF or image) and Microsoft Word.
• Export differences as comments in a PDF document or as a change log to share and discuss with others.

Automate Conversion (available only in FineReader 14 Corporate and Enterprise)

• Convert batches of documents automatically by setting the Hot Folder tool of FineReader 14 to “watch” a folder on a local drive, network drive, FTP server or mailbox.
• Schedule document conversion at pre-defined hours with pre-defined settings.

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