How do I find 'Copy Text From Picture' in OneNote?

FourSquare Training Article

Here's the fix that you need to get OCR image to text up and running in OneNote.

OneNote OCR not working? If you are struggling to use optical character recognition (OCR) in OneNote with the 'Copy Text From Picture' feature, then you are not alone. The most common issue which people face appears to be that the menu option to convert an image into text just isn't there. The most likely explanation for this is that you are using the OneNote Web App.

So far as we are aware, if you are using the OneNote Web App then the OCR engine won't work and you can't change your settings to enable it.

Difficulty: Fixing and using optical character recognition in OneNote has a moderate to low level of difficulty and you don't need any specialist knowledge to accomplish this.

Troubleshooting Optical Character Recognition in OneNote

You will need to download a physical version of OneNote (AKA the on-premise or desktop version) to install onto your PC from the Microsoft website: (Install OneNote from Microsoft website here).

Once you have physically installed OneNote using this method, open it up and insert an image. The right-mouse-click option to convert an image to text will now be available to you.

When you click on 'Copy Text From Picture' you can then paste it in to your OneNote page (CTRL and V).

OneNote Optical Character Recognition Accuracy

As you can see, Microsoft's OCR engine struggled a little bit with the bend in the page at the start of the conversion, but from there on did a fairly good job. From the fourth line onwards, in fact, the OCR engine is only really struggling with picking up punctuation correctly. It would take a bit of editing, but there's no denying that once you have OneNote's image to text converter up and running it could be a very efficient way of adding quotations to your pages.

From the few tests that we ran, the Microsoft OCR option looks to be roughly about as accurate as the free OCR conversion services available Online such as that provided by Onlineocr.net: Free optical character recognition service from Onlineocr.

In fact, in some instances Microsoft's OCR engine did actually pick up fragments of text accurately which the free services mis-transcribed.

Tips: simple tips to get the best OCR picture to text conversion accuracy for OneNote

1. If you are photographing text in a book, make the page as flat as you can, just as you would if you were using a scanner.
   
   
2. Increase the contrast of the image.
   
   
3. Change the image to black and white using a free service such as that provided by ConvertImage.net: convert an image to black and white with Convertimage.net.
   
   
4. Set the DPI (Dots per Square Inch) to 300 using a free DPI conversion service such as Convert.town's DPI converter: DPI Conversion from Convert.town.
   
   

Even if you use these measures to improve the OCR accuracy in OneNote you will still need to proofread and edit the text to get 100% accuracy, especially if you are taking print content and digitising it for your OneNote page. The convert image to text feature seems to work much better when the original text comes from a digital source, rather than from physical print.

Nonetheless, OCR is a great feature and a good time saver for producing things such as reading lists, course notes and learning resources for students.

The example that we used to demonstrate converting a picture to text in OneNote here is an excerpt from Amitav Ghosh's novel The Glass Palace: HarperCollins (London, 2000), p.129.

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