Scanning and Text Recognition (OCR)
You can add paper documents to M-Files with a scanner. To use the scanning features, press the Alt key and click Operations from the menu bar. When a document scan is complete, M-Files suggests the scanned file to be converted to a searchable PDF with optical character recognition (OCR).
M-Files automatically suggests the character recognition if you drag and drop an image to M-Files. You can also convert non-searchable PDFs and images to searchable PDFs manually with the context menu of the file.
You can use optical character recognition with these file formats:
- TIF
- TIFF
- JPG
- JPEG
- BMP
- PNG
Important information for admins
- The OCR features in M-Files do not support mass operations. They are meant for conversions of a small number of files at a time.
- For information about network scanning, see Scanner Sources.
- The scanner integration in M-Files Desktop uses the TWAIN and WIA technologies. Only scanners with a TWAIN or WIA driver are supported.
- System administrators can change settings for scanning and optical character recognition in Advanced Vault Settings. The settings are in the section .
- If text recognition is done to an image that is not saved to M-Files, the file is saved as a PDF. Otherwise, you can find the original image file in the version history of the object.
Importing Image Files as Searchable PDFs
To import a picture file to the vault as a searchable PDF: