Screen OCR To Retrieve Otherwise Undetectable Text

[mtettmar]

Thanks to gpulawski for posting this tip.

If you have Microsoft Office 2003 or Microsoft Office 2007 installed you have something called Microsoft Office Document Imaging, or MODI, which can perform OCR on Tiff and BMP files and is scriptable. Since Macro Scheduler can easily capture the screen, or a window, to a bitmap file, we can use MODI to perform OCR on the screen, or a window, to get its text. Here's how:

VBStart Function DoOCR(bitmapfile) Dim miDoc Dim miLayout Dim stringOut set miDoc=CreateObject("MODI.Document") miDoc.Create (bitmapfile) ' Perform OCR. 'You can change the mousepointer here to an hourglass or something. miDoc.Images(0).OCR 'Change the mouse back to normal default. set miLayout = miDoc.Images(0).Layout stringOut=miLayout.Text 'MsgBox(stringOut) DoOCR = stringOut Set miLayout = Nothing Set miDoc = Nothing End Function VBEND /* //This example OCRs entire screen //Capture Entire Screen to bitmap GetScreenRes>x,y ScreenCapture>0,0,x,y,%TEMP_DIR%\~scrn.bmp //Use OCR to get text from screen VBEval>DoOCR("%TEMP_DIR%\~scrn.bmp"),TheText //Display text MessageModal>TheText */ //This example OCRs just the active window GetActiveWindow>title,X,Y,W,H ScreenCapture>x,Y,{%X%+%W%},{%Y%+%H%},%TEMP_DIR%\~scrn.bmp //Use OCR to get text from active window VBEval>DoOCR("%TEMP_DIR%\~scrn.bmp"),TheText //Display the text MessageModal>TheText

This is really handy if you need to get text from a window which is not otherwise detectable - not exposed by the application as real text objects.

Edit: If running Office 2007 MODI is not installed by default. Run your office setup and select from the installation options to install the MODI components.
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Marcus Tettmar
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