ABBYY FineReader PDF Reviews

It literally helped my firm save HUNDREDS of man-hours of data entry by running all of our scanned documents through ABBYY and relying heavily upon its OCR to produce a variety of formats which we were able to quickly cross verify and enter into the accounting software. In short, the quality and intelligence of their OCR engine is tremendously accurate and fast!

The licensing stuff is a little TOO strict and often the remote licensing procedure has to be manually restarted within WIndows Services. We eventually bought more licenses after realizing that ABBYY will be a critical component in my firm's efforts to digitize all of our records and hard copies onto our cloud-hosted server. However, for a very small business that may not warrant another license purchase, they will quickly find out that ABBYY is quick to detect multiple sessions of the same serial code and will block both out. A little excessive, but I can understand their strict use and protection of this fine product.

Ease of Use in combining and editing documents.
Simple to adjust, remove, merge, and edit text.

OCR function not wholly accurate, but no program is.
Image adjustment is slower and has a steep learning curve. I wish you could work on doc image without first running OCR (adds time). Steeper learning curve on OCR.
Commenting on docs not as clean/clear to follow along as on other programs.

OCR was useful for conversion (but the engine is a bit outdated)

The UI is non-intuitive, can't handle large PDFs (e.g. writing notes in a book), no collaboration, expensive for students - waste of money

It's easy to use, and has all the features and functionality that I need. I like the user interface quite a bit. It's so user-friendly - not surprising with how intuitive the functionality is.

Actually, I can't think of a single thing I don't like, or like less, about this software. It's so user friendly, and such a great value for the price!

PDF to EXCEL converting,
Abby screenshot reader

I like everything. Abby screenshot reader shoud have some editing options.

This program allows you to work with pdf files completely, you can edit files created from screenshots and scans, it has many more functions than the free version of adobe reader.

The price could be lower ;) In my work, I often need a program not only to read but also edit documents, often scans of documents, some information on documents must be obscured due to data protection, etc. basic programs do not provide such functions.

Just how easy it is to convert PDF files to Excel.

We didn't have any issues. Everything was there what we normally need it.

This software is very accurate and effective to read make pdfs save important files also to collaborate and merge some.docs

Sometimes some.features are not too clearly to use and to get all the functions you get to buy a very full version of the software and some people can't get it

I bought Abbyy to use as an OCR for volunteer work but it turned out to be so much more. It’s become my default PDF viewer as well. I love the ability to add and delete pages to any PDF.

I really haven’t found anything I’m not happy with.

Very easy to navigate, scan and ocr the files, especially pictures. This soft has very accurate OCR performance

Always confusing how to start OCR with added files. ABBYY needs to make it easy

1. I use abbyFine Reader to convert pdf, scanned documents, and photographic documents with text into the text of other formats or ebook formats of my choice (.epub, .azw3. .rtf, Word, Wordperfect, Html, Microsoft Word, editable pdf, etc.). AbbyFine Reader 15 is the only software to convert ebooks by recognizing pictures or tables and recognizing the layout in the source document as much as possible.
2. I use AbbyFineReader-15 and the version before to clean out unwanted text from a document. I mean, cut out unnecessary information I do not want to appear in my documents, or ebook or text conversion, or when I produce audios from the outputs
3. FineReader 15, as I have tested side by side with other pdf editors, can compare two documents of different formats of up to 5,000 – 10,000 pages or even more without asking you to reduce them into smaller chunks.
4. I have found AbbyFineReaderPDF-15 and the versions before the current version very useful for repairing photocopied items, cropping documents, and repairing mixed photographic and text pdf files with unassailable OCR capabilities.
5. I can search, insert, and delete blocks of text from pdf files.
6. Price-wise, this software is an investment, a must-have for organizations and individuals who handle documents of different formats, for people in academics, and people who move content from PDF to other multimedia formats.

So far so good, BUT add new functionalities, like (1) audio capabilities, (2) converting pdf to Publisher, (3) Improving ebook conversion

I routinely use FineReader to re-tool documents sent by clients and other attorneys into compact, clear .pdfs with OCR. File sizes are typically one-tenth the size of the scanned file I received, and usually at least one-third the file size. FR can correct trapezoidal distortion and improve text qualities in other ways. The text editing tools work smartly and easily. I appreciate that FR will OCR files in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean and mixed with English. I can also easily create .pdfs from cell phone photos sent of documents, page by page. FR also converts .pdfs to Excel, Word, and PowerPoint formats.

I am very pleased with FR version 15, but it lacks the excellent bulk .pdf processing scripts that you can write in Adobe Acrobat; however, the FR .pdf files are typically more compact than the Acrobat files. I also liked version 12, but I was not pleased with the changes from version 12 to 14. I found verion 14 unreasonably difficult to use.

A wonderful work on pdf like:
- Editing scanned documents
- OCR and converting scanned documents to word or Excell
- Consolidating files

I would like the OCR to work better on Arabic language like it's working perfectly on English and French, one other thing is Excell may also need some improvements, maybe it's already done on the latest version.

ABBYY FineReader PDF has saves me countless hours of time of data entry. I can simply scanned the physical document and change the form to digital and running the OCR tools to make the text on the document editable. The OCR tools is the best i have tried and it can read the text perfectly even when the text is disoriented.

Some of the font can't be read by the software, especially for an Arabic font. It is also happen with a custom font and the software won't work well with this type of text. Other think that i hope they can improve is the licensing. The license is install on the computer, and it is not easy to transfer the license to other computer.

Abbyy FineReader support for almost all languages is impressive. We use many different languages, so it is very important for us to have a tool that can recognize well.
It is easy to use, with the simplified interface, one can work fast, through materials.
FineReader can export to different types which is also a great function.
Convert document formats and make them searchable, from scanned documents, screenshots or images to pdfs and html.
It is very good for creating new documents from multiple files, which can be imported in one project then exported to a new file.

The price is fairly high for those who don't have many documents.
It crashes sometimes while scanning documents with older scanners or when given more demanding tasks, like automatic scan of multiple pages.
If the scan is lower quality, or font is small, there are some mistakes that need to be fixed manualy, which can be time consuming.

It does a great deal, and has super OCR. And the printer function allows you to add printed output to another pdf file, either at the beginning or end of the recipient file.

I have to reinstall it many times per week, often after the computer is put to sleep. Also, the print to pdf accessory seems usually -- but not always -- to print without keeping the text layer, so it has to be recognized again.

ABBYY FineReader is a leader in OCR software and that means that their OCR is the best. It can perform character recognition in any language. I am amazed by all the functions that this piece of software has but one thing is so cool and I use it almost every day to help me organize papers in my office. That is "Hot Folder" - every time you add some document into the desired folder it automatically converts it for you into any type of document you want. It can be editable PDF, Word or any other combination you would ever want. It can do it!
Text is recognized very well and without any errors almost every time.

Sometimes it is struggling with some special letters from foreign languages like Cyrillic or some letters like čćšđž and many times I found that those are recognized wrong. Also, it tends to keep layout and formatting as the original document but sometimes it doesn't work well. Also, when you are trying to manually select area for the recognition it can be very hard and tiring to do all that manually because the software didn't recognize page properly. Most of the times that is not needed but when you are shooting or scanning in lower resolutions be prepared for that.

One of the most useful aspects of Abbyy Finereader, especially when compared to other OCR software is the level of control offered to the user. This enables poor quality scans as an example to be cleaned up and optimized for recognition. It is easy to edit pages collectively or individually to compensate for distortions and even deal with water marks and poor quality images.

The accuracy is phenomenal and ability to use dictionaries or customize your own increases recognition capacity. Abbyy Fine Reader has greatly improved over the years and i expect great things from them in the future as technology evolves.

I do have a wish list:

A setting to have ability to ignore pages during recognition.
The ability to ignore a column within a table.
A way to verify text in a chosen sequence such as down then up and or select areas to ignore.

I've been using Abbyy Finereader for about a decade now (since I stumbled upon it with a friend who digitized a lot of his readings).

Abbyy is a powerful OCR software! I say powerful, because it captures nearly everything you throw at it, JPG, PDF... and if you're lucky, even handwritten notes are captures (often as image, but sometimes as text too!).

It allows to import directly to Microsoft word for text editing. It even mimics the original scanned document in terms of the page layout and text sizes.

Very useful for digitizing your existing documents (which you do not have a digital copy of). Heck, you can even scan and OCR an entire book! (copyrights apply, of course).

Another good thing for me.... I can use if offline! Modern OCR apps require you to go online (which I cannot always be given the nature of my work and travels).

Now there are many other alternatives to using ABBYY as an OCR software, and most come as a free service (e.g., Google, Dropbox). It is even made easier now due to the proliferation of mobile phones. Scan a document via mobile phone, then use the online services for OCR, all for free now.

Earlier I had to work a lot with the documents of our company and client contracts. For example, the customer brought a paper version of the contract, I scanned it, recognized it, rules of error, etc. And all this happened with the help of Fine Reader professional versions. I also like that you can translate and save in various formats. For example, text in the format djwu or pdf, and even not copied, after carrying out the text through this program you can save the text in Word and use it anywhere and anyhow. In general, this is a simple and convenient program, albeit not cheap.

I happened that some versions of ABBYY Fine Reader did not recognize the printer and I had to reinstall the program or run to a colleague and ask him to print the necessary document processed in the application. In doing so, I had a standard Canon printer, so there should not be any problems.

Ability to keyword search without OCR to see if I need to OCR for research purposes — saving hours of time. Cheaper than true assistive technology for conversion purposes, even though fine reader is not entirelY accessible by voice, it is sometimes easier to see than some other assistive tech software. Used by college campuses for textbooks so I know it can scan books I need.

Needs LAME mp3 encoder and quality voices package (ivona, Acapela etc.) with Read Aloud feature with ability to export (if only for disabled people). This needs the ability to choose from a wide range of voices. The reason is that I have to OCR in Finereader then open the doc in Acrobat to Read Aloud, and then I have no way to play the document on my cell phone as an audiobook or burn it to cd to take with me. I can submit a book request to Bookshare for their mp3 but that can take years if at all. I need to know conversion tips like the disabled services at college campuses know, such as how to remove different colored highlighter colors to make a clean paper even if the real one is marked up. I need to learn more about storing multiple documents long term without my computer crashing.
I purchased find reader mobile and finally the PDF in the same package, fine reader PDF is usable but occasionally says that my license doesn’t work. The mobile app became unusable as in a trial even though I have purchased it almost immediately. I would like it up and running again

Its accuracy; it is an improvement over the previous version. I owned version 8 and would periodically try newer versions as they were offered, but the accuracy wasn't any better than that of version 8 despite what the advertising said. Version 15 was noticeably more accurate for the types of documents I OCR. I like that you can buy it as an owned program and not as a subscription. There's a music OCR program I like, but because it's a subscription, I won't buy it. I like having quick access to diacritical marks and symbols in this version.

I had been a user of version 8 for many years. The layout of the program was different and I still sometimes struggle to find a function that I want to do. I dislike having to double click on a page image on the left side to get it to display in the OCR windows. In version 8 I just had to click on the image once to change pages. I miss having the text name of functions written below icons. Verification should be just to the right of Recognize rather than on the far right. The flow is currently wrong: it should be recognize, verify, save.

The program has an intuitive interface and is consistent and capable when it comes to PDF editing and excel table extractions

I wish the document combining took less steps

My go-to OCR software. Does an excellent job of converting both English and foreign-language text to Word format. Pretty decent at converting PDF docs that have less than stellar resolution into correct text. Very pleased that it can covert both to .doc as well as .docx format.

Generally has difficulty dealing with images and graphics. Often converts tabbed text to text boxes, which can only be effectively further used in Word by copying and pasting the contents into blank pages and re-integrating them into the document. If it converted tabbed text to tables, it would be far easier to use the result.

The ability to combine documents from different programs into a single PDF

this could use a certified signature field or the ability to import a signature from a file