OneNote and Handwriting

[Mr. Ludwig]

I dislike using a tablet pc and prefer taking notes on paper on occasion.
I would find it very helpful if I could just scan these notes and have them
transformed into text by OneNote.

Is this possible? If yes how?
If no, will it be possible (addon, new release, update)?

regards

Patrick B. Ludwig

 

[Erik Sojka]

There's no native feature in OneNote to do what you're looking for. You
would have to manually scan the notes into the computer (any scanning
software will work for this) then attempt to perform OCR on the notes,
which may have differeing levels of success depending on how neat your
handwriting is.

Just curious - what do you dislike about using a Tablet PC? Do you have
a heavier model or something (like a convertible model)? Some of the
Tablets I've tried were pretty light and felt comparable to a pad of
paper in a folio. Remember that (at least in the first gen models) the
intention of the Tablet was to mimic paper as much as possible. I
imagine that some of the MS folks lurking here would be interested in why
one would say that the Tablet isn't like a tablet.

 

[Dwight]

Ah, but I think there is. If you take handwriting notes in OneNote, you can
SAVE AS a Word document. In the SAVE AS process it converts the text
automatically. Write well and it will translate well.

Dwight Fischer

 

[Erik Sojka]

Nope.

OneNote does not have *any* inherent built-in handwriting recognition
capabilities. It gets these capabilities via the Ink APIs provided by the
Tablet PC OS.

If you "write" using a mouse or external digitizer tablet in OneNote on a
normal PC, then save the page as a Word doc, ON will convert the
handwriting to pictures and then embed the pictures in the Word doc.

 

[Ben M. Schorr, MVP-OneNote/Outlook]

Eric's right - text input using the Tablet OS and handwriting API can be
interpreted and converted to text. If your writing is even moderately good
then it will do a fairly good job of converting it. Scanning in a piece of
handwritten text is a much different thing and requires an OCR engine that
will probably have trouble with your handwritten text unless your
handwriting approximates typed text.

Even typewritten text doesn't always OCR perfectly.

Of course, if you don't need it recognized as text then it's no big trick to
just have your handwritten text placed in the document or notebook as a
picture which you can easily read on screen.

--
Aloha,

-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, OneNote-MVP
http://home.hawaii.rr.com/schorr
Microsoft OneNote FAQ:
http://home.hawaii.rr.com/schorr/Computers/OneNoteFAQ.htm

**I apologize but I am unable to respond to direct requests for assistance.
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