OCR & PDF/A Archiving add-on

Use the PDF Converter Professional add-on to add Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and PDF/A support to the PDF Converter for SharePoint and PDF Converter Services. These technologies make image-based content discoverable, and allow documents to be archived in the PDF/A 1b, 2b and 3b formats required by regulatory bodies.

PDF Converter Professional

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Optical Character Recognition

Image based content such as scans and faxes are typically stored as ‘bitmaps’, a visual representation of the original document, but without all the important information such as the document’s text in a computer readable format.

As a result the document looks perfectly normal to humans, who have text recognition built into their brains, but computers cannot make any sense of it. By applying OCR, the text is recognised and placed on a hidden layer in the document.

The resulting document still looks the same as before, but it can now be indexed by search engines, and PDF readers can be used to search inside it. Documents that were lost before are now fully discoverable.

Convert to PDF/A

Many organisations are governed by a regulatory body specific to their industry. The SEC, FTC, FCC, EPA, NLRB, IRS, EEOC, OSHA, and OFCOM are some examples. These regulatory bodies often dictate document retention periods and standards.

One of the standards require documents to be archived in the PDF/A format. PDF/A is different from the regular PDF format generated by most applications as it is specifically intended for long term archiving to make sure that – whatever technology is in use in 20 years’ time – documents can still be processed and accessed with relative ease.

By using the PDF Converter Professional add-on, all file formats supported by the Muhimbi PDF Converter - including Office, Email, HTML and others - can be converted to fully compliant PDF/A files.

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