ABBYY FineReader Direct Formatting Locked (bold/italic)
Thread poster: Dylan J Hartmann
Dylan J Hartmann
Dylan J Hartmann  Identity Verified
Australia
Member (2014)
Thai to English
+ ...

MODERATOR
Apr 17, 2015

Using FineReader to read Thai pdfs for translation into English.

In the exported file, direct formatting changes to Bold/Italics is locked in MS Word.

I have been able to bypass this by 'cut'+'paste as plain text' and then applying bold but this is quite time-consuming when the same changes have to be made to several files.

What is the process for exporting from FineReader and still allowing direct formatting.


 
Meta Arkadia
Meta Arkadia
Local time: 06:28
English to Indonesian
+ ...
More info, please Apr 17, 2015

My (old) version of FineReader cannot handle Thai at all, and nor can Word:mac 2011 here. A matter of settings, I suppose.
However, if it's an extractable PDF (rather than a scanned/dead PDF), I can save the text as RTF, and open it in TextEditor, preserving some formatting like bold and italics.



I used an Automator action for it - Automator comes with OS X - that you can save as a Folder Action to batch process PDFs this way.



In case of a dead PDF, you can tell ABBY to save the result of the OCR as HTML, and open it in Word:mac. Or as PDF, and proceed as mentioned above.

Cheers,

Hans

[Edited at 2015-04-17 05:47 GMT]


 
Emma Goldsmith
Emma Goldsmith  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 00:28
Member (2004)
Spanish to English
ABBYY options Apr 17, 2015

Are you sure you're exporting in docx format?

Also, you could check your settings in ABBYY.
There are a couple of ways to get ABBYY to retain basic formatting:
1. Go to Tools>options>Save>docx and under Document layout, select "Formatted text"
2. Go to Tools>options>Save>docx and under Document layout, select "Plain text" and then under Text settings enable "Keep bold, italic..."


 
Stanislav Okhvat
Stanislav Okhvat
Local time: 03:28
English to Russian
Re: direct formatting changes to Bold/Italics is locked in MS Word Apr 17, 2015

Hello, DJHartmann,

I'm only guessing here, but this reminds me of a problem I came across in the past when formatting documents produced from dead PDFs by ABBYY Finereader. Whenever I tried to clear bold or italic formatting from some words by using Ctrl+B / Ctrl+I or the toolbar buttons, there was no effect or some text became regular while the surrounding text became bold (sort of toggle effect, which looked like a bug).

I later discovered that Finereader often create
... See more
Hello, DJHartmann,

I'm only guessing here, but this reminds me of a problem I came across in the past when formatting documents produced from dead PDFs by ABBYY Finereader. Whenever I tried to clear bold or italic formatting from some words by using Ctrl+B / Ctrl+I or the toolbar buttons, there was no effect or some text became regular while the surrounding text became bold (sort of toggle effect, which looked like a bug).

I later discovered that Finereader often creates special paragraph and character styles that it applies to text instead of direct formatting, and these character styles are quite difficult to get rid of. This is typical for dead PDFs because some words on scanned images sometimes look more bold than others...

This is curable using Document Cleaner tool (free) in TransTools for Word add-in. Using the Tag Cleaner command (first tab), uncheck all options, check "Remove character styles, leave direct formatting only" option, press Clean Tags button and these character styles will be removed, leaving the original formatting intact.

Best regards,
Stanislav Okhvat
Translator Tools – Useful tools for every translator
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Dylan J Hartmann
Dylan J Hartmann  Identity Verified
Australia
Member (2014)
Thai to English
+ ...

MODERATOR
TOPIC STARTER
This is what's happening! Apr 17, 2015

okhvatstas wrote:

When formatting documents produced from dead PDFs by ABBYY Finereader. Whenever I tried to clear bold or italic formatting from some words by using Ctrl+B / Ctrl+I or the toolbar buttons, there was no effect or some text became regular while the surrounding text became bold (sort of toggle effect, which looked like a bug).

I later discovered that Finereader often creates special paragraph and character styles that it applies to text instead of direct formatting, and these character styles are quite difficult to get rid of. This is typical for dead PDFs because some words on scanned images sometimes look more bold than others...



This is precisely what's happening.

I'd love to try the tag cleaner you mentioned, however I'm on a mac and use Wordfast

I've issued a support ticket with ABBYY, so will see what they say.

Thanks!


 
Rolf Keller
Rolf Keller
Germany
Local time: 00:28
English to German
Word – your unknown friend Apr 18, 2015

okhvatstas wrote:

I later discovered that Finereader often creates special paragraph and character styles that it applies to text instead of direct formatting, and these character styles are quite difficult to get rid of.


The solution: Set the bold, italic etc attributes of the active character style(s) so that they automatically reflect the resp attributes of the underlying paragraph style. You don't need a third-party tool for that.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-word/word-2010-styles-dont-change/814e03ba-dc6c-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5 (should work similarly for any Windows-Word from 2003 on.)


 
Stanislav Okhvat
Stanislav Okhvat
Local time: 03:28
English to Russian
Setting attributes of character styles Apr 19, 2015

Hello, Rolf,

Thanks for the suggestion. True, you can change the character styles. However, ABBYY Finereader often creates at least a dozen character styles. Changing their attributes manually takes time. Also, you are not guaranteed that the change will give the correct result in every case (as a result of style change, some text will become formatted differently than it is in the original PDF / scan), so you might need to check formatting against the original PDF/scan to make sure
... See more
Hello, Rolf,

Thanks for the suggestion. True, you can change the character styles. However, ABBYY Finereader often creates at least a dozen character styles. Changing their attributes manually takes time. Also, you are not guaranteed that the change will give the correct result in every case (as a result of style change, some text will become formatted differently than it is in the original PDF / scan), so you might need to check formatting against the original PDF/scan to make sure it's correct. Document Cleaner does it much quicker.

Best regards,
Stanislav Okhvat
Translator Tools – Useful tools for every translator
Collapse


 
Rolf Keller
Rolf Keller
Germany
Local time: 00:28
English to German
No need to change any attributes manually Apr 21, 2015

okhvatstas wrote:

However, ABBYY Finereader often creates at least a dozen character styles. Changing their attributes manually takes time.


The link I gave you explains how to get rid of all unwanted character styles in one go. Even if there are 9999 character styles, you need only one keystroke (Ctrl-Spacebar) for the hole bunch.


 


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ABBYY FineReader Direct Formatting Locked (bold/italic)






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