My (really not great) handwriting into pretty, pretty computer text?

September 23, 2009 3:34 AM

My (really not great) handwriting into pretty, pretty computer text? Is Livescribe the answer?

I have to take a lot of handwritten notes in my job. This results in a lot of them being stored up in notebooks and I will never be bothered to type them all up afterwards and so alot of useful info is left to moulder. I'm looking for a solution that will enable me to make handwritten notes, transfer them to a computer and then have them OCR'd (is that a verb?) into text which I can then store and transfer.

I've seen the Pulse Smartpen.

A few points:-

1. I'm fine with using the special dotted paper
2. If relevant, running Windows XP
3. I'm not fussed about recording audio although it doesn't hurt if it's there.
4. I want to avoid (at all costs) taking notes on ordinary paper and then scanning and OCRing them
5. I've seen some stuff which involves clipping something to an ordinary sheet of paper - not sure I like the look of that.

My questions:-

1. Does this thing actually take my (admittedly not great) handwriting and convert it into text? I've seen some reviews but would be interested to hear if anyone has live experience of this
2. If it doesn't, does anyone have any recommendations of something that would do this?

Thanks for your help

posted by eb98jdb to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Try Microsoft OneNote. If you have a tablet PC or if you have one of those Wacom tablets you can take notes directly to it.

But if you need to take notes on paper, then you can scan it to OneNote and it will do the OCRing (you started it) for you. If you have a cameraphone or a camera, you can take pictures of notes and upload it to OneNote which will read your handwriting and convert it to text if you want to.


Disclosure: I use OneNote but not the features I describe above, but I know it's there.

For a free solution, I think Evernote does this too but I'm too lazy to Google.
posted by onich at 6:58 PM on September 23

Hi onich,

Thanks for your response - I do actually habe OneNote. One thing I'm really keen to avoid though is having to scan and OCR all the text page by page - have you seen any other solutions?
posted by eb98jdb at 1:23 AM on September 24

Also, OneNote 2007 on XP appears to only offer handwriting to text if you input on a tablet PC.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/HP011125601033.aspx
posted by eb98jdb at 2:00 AM on September 24

Pixily?

You send them an envelope of up to 50 pages for $14.95 a month, first envelope free, then they scan it, OCR it, and store it online - then send you back the documents or shred them for you. You can download the pdfs, or pay for a DVD. If you have a large bulk of paper to deal with in one go, you can do it for 9.5 cents a page, shipping included.
posted by ArkhanJG at 11:34 AM on September 24