FineReader blog

One of the most common challenges in our daily work with content is that it usually involves working with documents of various formats. Let’s say you are trying to compare a legal agreement in Word document with a scanned copy which has been signed and sent back to you per email. What do you do?

PDF and Microsoft® Word are probably the most common file formats in the office environment. Many common tasks require users to convert from one format to the other —reusing content for other purposes, editing the text with changes tracked, or sharing a final document with revised layout and formatting, for example.

Digital Archiving enables e-discovery, litigation support and regulatory compliance and facilitates data analytics. Read more about how to preserve documents from paper and digital input channels as accessible and searchable PDF/A assets with FineReader Server. To answer the question in the title, we should first understand what archiving is. Many people confuse it with back-up, so let’s go into details to differentiate them.

The smarter PDF solution With the latest version of its universal PDF tool for Windows, ABBYY has packed in a host of enhancements to the PDF functionality, along with smoothly integrated AI-based OCR technology for more sophisticated document conversion and a brand new export option to compare documents.

Do you also spend hours manually checking changes in updated document versions line by line, word by word? Have you encountered a situation when your teammate forgot to turn on the “track changes” mode in Microsoft® Word and you had to painfully look for those edits or use compare documents function in Word itself? Just think of all the time and resources wasted on printing, proofreading and re-checking your own and other people’s edits.

There have been many traditional companies, which have been overtaken by young enterprises coming from the purely digital side. One of the most prominent is traditional taxi versus services such as Uber and Lyft. Not only price differences facilitate such success. Another reason is the so-called “digital disruption”.

Yes, you should! “What is OCR?” you may ask, “I do not need OCR, I just want to open my PDFs” According to statistics presented at the PDF Days 2018 conference, organized by the PDF association, one quarter of PDF documents are “image-only” (non-searchable) PDF documents.

  Law firms that embrace technologies stay ahead of the curve was the keynote for this year’s ABA TECHSHOW® Conference and EXPO held by the American Bar Association (ABA) Law Practice Division in Chicago, USA, February 27 - March 2, 2019 under the motto “Bringing Lawyers & Technology Together”.

With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) being applicable in all member states of the European Union as of 25th May 2018, companies of all sizes and industries are bound to define processes and systems to manage personal data in a more structured and reliable way than ever before. Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind are customer databases, CRM systems, marketing automation tools. But what about documents?

Time and time again information is being disclosed in high-profile legal cases because of epic redaction fails. It is true, that the PDF format has its specifics, that make redaction somewhat tricky, but understanding the basics and using the right tools makes it simple and efficient. Why do redaction “accidents” happen? For sure placing black bars over the text lines will not do the job.

Among all the variety of different existing variants of PDF, PDF/UA is definitely the one that shall become the most widespread. In a digital era, the Web became the major way to get around with many aspects of life, and people must do more and more interactions digitally. Such entities as state authorities, suppliers of services, banks, etc., publish an increasing number of documents on their websites.

The end of the year is time for recollection and reflection. This year we have something big to be thankful and proud of: ABBYY FineReader celebrates 25 years on the market! Today a powerful PDF editing application drawing its power from exceptional quality OCR, FineReader has come a long way and undergone some transformations since its launch back in 1993.