OCR will NOT help with .doc or .xls. Neither is an image for input to Optical Character Recognition.
Please read the replies from Corion and Marto as already posted... and see Marto's for .pdf
And if you're thinking about "pull(ing)...from (unknown) binary formats or image text" you better start thinking about how to deal with malware.
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Do you understand what the letters OCR actually mean? I do not think that you do, when I don't know something I research it. Various people have replied to you explaining essentially what OCR means.
Obviously there is no 'general ocr solution' to do what you want to do, given that you can't OCR things that are not images. You mean you want to text strip the attachments. You have been given links which discuss the topics of OCRing, using super search will return plenty of resources regards text stripping various types of files.
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Martin, I do understand what OCR means. I was using it in the context to refer to pulling text out of non-text PDFs. I was not saying that I wanted to apply it to word documents. However, I was looking for a general application that could OCR the pdfs, but also extract text from the word documents via usage of the office libraries.
-Ty
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Ok, once more with feeling.
You said:
'I was hoping for a general OCR solution that I could use to pull all the text from the documents regardless of it they contained text, binary formats, or image text.'
OCR has no context with non image documents. I have previously told you that you should not be using this term in conjunction with non image documents. It has no context here.
If you are looking to code a 'general application' to achieve this goal then you have been given sufficient information to get you started, at least now you should know what you should be learning, where to look, and the pseudo code for your application. If you have any problems changing this pseudo code into functioning Perl post the code and we will try to help.
Martin
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This is possible if you are an MS Office user, and then you will already have all the tools you need. See this blog page for how to do it manually.
But you're on your own working out how to drive those 5 steps via OLE :)
Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
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