05 February 2011

ABBYY FineReader doesn't work on Snow Leopard

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I have a Fujitsu SnapScan S510M document scanner. It's an awesomely fast and convenient 2-sided scanner with a automatic document feeder. Hit a button and it does everything - it's my favorite peripheral connected to my Mac.

It also came with a great software bundle: Adobe Acrobat 8 for occasionally editing PDF files and ABBYY FineReader for converting scanned documents to text. I've never needed FineReader until today, however when I launched it, I received the error that the document that I'd just scanned with my SnapScan had not been scanned with a SnapScan. Typical for bundled software to only work with images that were scanned on the hardware that they were bundled with, but I'd just used the right hardware.

Turns out to be a bug with the SnapScan drivers and FineReader software. Shame on both vendors for not checking for updates regularly. Go here to download the updates.

FineReader inconveniently doesn't give you the option to install anywhere (I keep most third party apps in a separate folder) but instead installs 3 programs in the folder ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap under Applications: Scan to Excel, Scan to Word and Scan to Searchable PDF. If you installed the previous version of FineReader anywhere else, delete it to avoid confusion after you install this update.

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Brooklyn, New York, United States