Onenote PDF OCR

I completely agree. What MS clearly doesn't understand is that more and more people (including myself) are using "note taking" services/apps as document repositories - meaning a place to store all of their important documents. Evernote encourages this by their "Remember Everything" tagline. Notes are actually more helpful for storing such documents because you can store multiple documents together or even different types of documents/images/sound or video files together. Evernote has long been recommended for going people who want to go completely paperless but this ABSOLUTELY REQUIRES the ability to OCR and search ALL PDFs/images - whether inline or attached. I've literally waited and searched for over 3 years trying to find an alternative to Evernote that can actually search and OCR any PDFs whether inline or attached but even though people have been begging for this functionality for years from MS, they keep ignoring it. I just don't understand it. I started to switch over to OneNote back when MS announced that OneDrive would be unlimited storage but then they rescinded it and I also found out that their so-called PDF search wouldn't work on any attached PDFs. If MS would change such a major thing as unlimited storage, how can I trust them with all of my data? So, here I am nearly 4 years later and back with Evernote Premium. I SO WISH that OneNote would have worked!

So, am I to understand that, two years later, PDF attachment searching still isn't possible in OneNote? And, when searching for a particular work, OneNote still can't accurately locate the word's location within notes? This is exactly the information that I need. I'm trying to decide between going back to Evernote and trying OneNote for going completely paperless but the most important thing for me in this decision is the ability to search within notes, files, images, and PDFs - whether inline or attachments. I've posted on every forum, Reddit sub, Facebook group, and anywhere else I could find (both in sections for Evernote and OneNote), read every article and comparison I could find andnoone hashbeenable to say that OneNote cannot search PDF attachments! This is such basic and completely necessary functionality for a note app to have! Yet, from I'm reading here, it's not the least priority for MS at all since here we are, years later with loads of people requesting this feature (and others, like me, just assuming such basic necessary functionality is already baked in stanard!) with absolutely no improvement whatsoever in OneNote's ability to search attached PDFs! This is crazy. Please, please someone tellme if I'm misunderstanding this and it actually does exist. But from everything I've read in this two years worth of forum replies, absolutely nothing has changed and PDF attachments are as unsearchable now as they ever were - with no improvements whatsoever. I suppose part of me knows that if this is true (as all indications show) it makes my decision absolutely easy and clear: Evernote it is.

Hi,

I'm a developer on the OneNote services team.  I have a couple of questions about what you're trying to do.

It sounds like these are PDF files that you're inserting as attachments in your OneNote notebook.  If that's the case, then unfortunately, our OCR does not index the content of file attachments currently.

If this is what you're trying to do, a way to get the contents of the PDF indexed would be to insert the PDF as a file printout.  This can be done by going to the Insert tab on the toolbar then clicking on the "File Printout" button and then selecting the PDF file you want to be inserted into OneNote.  This will result in each of the pages in the PDF being inserted into the OneNote page as an image.  These images will be indexed for search.

Another way you could do this is by viewing the PDF in your favorite PDF viewer, and then use the "print to OneNote" feature.  This can be done by printing the PDF and selecting "Send to OneNote" in the printer list.  The result will be images on your OneNote page (not a file attachment) which will be indexed in the search function.

A third way you could get searchable PDF content is by navigating your browser to the PDF on the internet and then clipping the PDF using the OneNote clipper.  This too will be indexed in the search function.

Please let me know which way you're trying to insert these PDF printouts so that I can understand better how to help you get things working correctly.

Thanks,

Scott K

I've had similar issues. A few comments:

I've imported from Evernote (using the new tool) and the scans came in as  PDF. From within each OneNote Note, I then  "inserted the PDF as a printout". The OCR did not work.

I did the following:

I opened the attachment in Onenote. The PDF opened in the Adobe program. I then tried to email to me@onenote (from the Adobe program...mail button). Opened the email in OneNote...Still would not re search.... No OCR.

I then again opened the PDF and it opened in the Adobe program. I then went to print to One Note still did not work. Then went back to the Adobe program clicked the PRINT ICON and then  "advanced" and there is a "print to image" that was unticked. I turned it on. I then printed to One note and OCR worked. 

So it appears it will work if sent as a printout with "save to image turned on". 

A disadvantage.  When you email to Me@onenote, or insert as printout from the icon within Onenote, the PDF file stays in OneNote...But no OCR.  When you print to OneNote the original file is not there. 

Cliff Shnier

Okay, thank you for the screen shot.  That really helps a lot in understanding what you're trying to do.

One last question... Are you using an O365 account for your notebooks?  Unfortunately we do not support enrichments such as OCR (which populates the text for the "copy text from image" feature) for Office 365 yet.  When you log in at onedrive.com, what does it say in the top left?  Does it say "OneDrive" or does it say "Office 365 | OneDrive"?  If it's the latter, this will explain why it's not working for you.