OCR - Handwriting transcription to digital text

1.2K votes

It would be great if OCR could be applied to recognize handwriting and turn it to text

Done App Feature Suggested by: Steven Chen (18 Aug, '17) • Upvoted: 22 Dec, '24 • Comments: 8

Comments: 8

13 Jul, '21
Rocketbook Team
We've got you covered! For every scan you send to email, Evernote, OneNote or Google Drive, you'll be able to have your handwritten notes transcribed into digital text. To turn this feature on, head to your destinations screen, select any email, Evernote, OneNote or Google Drive destination, and toggle OCR (optical character recognition) transcription [ON].
08 Sep, '21
Tasha
You guys have this already, but it’s the weakest link in my opinion. Specifically:
- it can’t tell when you’re starting a new line or just continuing from the last sentence, so text comes through with lots of gaps
- no contextual character recognition - errors that day cause a common word to be spelled incorrectly are frustrating
- no formatting or spacing, no table recognition on Core
- no options to tailor transcribed email content or titles
1
21 Jan, '22
Mr Daniel Bowes
Agree that there is much opportunity in this area of the product. The inability to differentiate between a true new line and a continuation of a line is annoying. I would also like to see some basic text formatting such as detection of indentation and bullet points.
1
26 Feb, '22
Marco Carolli
Please include the support for Italian in the OCR.
1
27 Apr, '22
Edwin
Some suggestions:
- Handwriting recognition accuracy is extremely poor, no matter how clearly I try to write. A lot of improvement is required. My main reason in using Rocketbook (then to OneNote) was the text transcription, allowing search to work in OneNote. When 50% of the text is misinterpreted and it takes 2x longer to correct transcripted notes than to type them originally, the usefulness of the tool is questionable
-- My daughter's iPad has 150% better handwriting recognition than the Rocketbook application. Since Rocketbook has access to high-res images, it should be able to do a lot better than it does.
- Recognize special characters or shapes (squares, triangles, etc)
- Designate a special character, such as an empty square box or triangle, as a "To Do" indicator. Once it is recognized, transfer the associated written item to the Outlook task list. Perhaps you can configure to which Task list tool should be used.
- Ditto re the new line comment. You should look for a period
3
27 Jul, '22
Kathy
It is a must to enhance this feature. To be able to recognize formats such as Meeting Minutes (topic, discussion, owner/next steps) is CLUTCH and would have people clamoring about this tool/technology not to see have minutes sent out as soon as the call/zoom/team meeting is complete is and would be incredible. Please Please Please work on this.
1
27 Dec, '22
Michelle
It would be useful to transcribe tables written on the dot grid to be interpreted as tables. Likewise, if I write something in outline form, I'd like it to stay that way in transcription. Reformatting is a pain. Having to search for bits of my table, because their getting interpreted as newspaper columns and sent to the bottom of the transcription, is really a pain.
03 Jan, '23
Anna G.
Agreed on all points about poor OCR quality. The OCR feature is ENTIRELY THE REASON for my purchase. I also have attempted to write as clearly in print as possible for the OCR to capture text correctly, but its better for my studying practice that I go back to pen and paper.
2