What is Optical Character Recognition (OCR)?

More and more businesses are converting their paper documents into digitized format in order to make access to information quick and easy, as well as more cost-effective. This is particularly useful for companies that have a vast library of documents that are generally kept indefinitely.

For documents that are only required for historical purposes and don’t have to be altered, a digital image is fine. However, if such information is active and will need to be changed occasionally or on a regular basis, conversion to a text document is necessary. This is where optical character recognition (OCR) comes in.

In order to transfer paper documents and information to a digitized format, optical character recognition (OCR) is required to convert papers into electronic versions that allow editing and altering of information.

OCR refers to software that analyzes images from a paper document and extracts the words of the text, putting it into a format that a computer can manipulate.

These systems have become quite sophisticated over the years, making the conversion as accurate as possible. Even handwriting and structured data can be extracted from files. These OCR systems allow users to take a paper document, feed it directly into an electronic computer file, and edit it using a standard word processor, such as Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel.