How To Do Data Entry with Scanners

"Can I use scanners and scanning software technology for data entry"? Yes you can, but only if it contains the best of penmanship.

As one who deals with paper surveys with open-ended questions and comments, I know what it's like to try to capture hand written text responses from those whose penmanship is a bit cryptic. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to just run these through some kind of scanner and have a computer transcribe it? Dream on!

There have been some very powerful advances in scanning software that does a pretty good job of converting printed words into editable ASCII characters. Most of us have used OCR software that comes bundled with scanners. I recently discovered the power of Adobe Acrobat to convert scanned printed material to editable ASCII characters that even automatically picks the correct font of the original. If handwritten comments are legible with the best of penmanship, Acrobat may even convert some of that, too. The quality of the text capture results are directly related to the clarity of the text on the scan. Scanning a document in pdf format creates an image, so make sure that your resolution is adequate. I would recommend scanning with no less than 300 dpi. If the quality of the original is high, the converted pdf file will look very much like the original except that the characters will now be editable and even searchable. The technology isn't perfect by any means, but it will amaze you.

Sometimes, when working with hard to read comments, it works best to use specialized software like Scantron's eListen 6.0 survey software. As their website says, "eListen 6.0 eliminates tedious manual data entry by capturing and storing handwritten responses using Scantron's Clarity OMR and Imaging scanner". This software captures the pre-defined comment section as an image which you can then let the reader try to decipher for themselves.

Another option that has worked well for us in circumstances where there are many open-ended questions is to scan the entire paper survey form using a high-speed copier like our Ricoh. We scan single or double-sided sheets and save the file in a pdf format and either burn the files to CD or post them to our ftp site.

Of course, there are many businesses, like ours, that provide manual transcription services for data entry of hand written comments to be included in your reports. That's part of the fun that I get to do from time to time.