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mbbloom
Participant
July 14, 2020
Question

How does Acrobat Pro DC work with Google suite: Classroom, Forms, Slides, Docs?

  • July 14, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 485 views

I'm a teacher preparing to go online and need to convert several worksheets, readings, etc. to editable text. I have used my Google account to convert PDFs into editable but it changes formatting extensively and does not pick up images.

I have been researching what I think I need to do-get Mircosoft Office actually loaded on my Windows computer because the free web-based Office that came with my computer 5 years ago will not work (I would love to have this confirmed) and get scanning OCR software (here's why I want Pro DC.)

Then the big question, how does Pro DC interface with the Google suite? My school does everything through Google Classroom. So, as I understand the process I must go through: I scan through Pro DC which picks up both text and images, save to my Microsoft files, go to my school Google account and upload file to transfer, then open in the Google format: Slides, Forms, Docs, etc. During this process does formatting change, do images come through without change, and do the editable capabilites remain? I need to link the editable text to the Read & Write app so students have access to additional reading and language support. Can anybody tell me if I am understanding what I need to do correctly and will Pro DC do what I need to get done?

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1 reply

gary_sc
Community Expert
gary_scCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 14, 2020

Hi MBBloom,

 

First off I thank and salute you for your work. I hail all who are vigilantly working through these "interesting times."

 

Secondly I have to pass the buck a bit because I have essentially no experience with Google Classroom or Google Docs and to make matters worse, I'm on a Mac. 

 

With that out in the open, your last paragraph does give me some wiggle room to present some comments on your plans.

 

What is the original form of the documents you wish to work with? Are they mimeograph sheets (yeah, I'm old), typewriter, (original digital documents that were printed so now you only have the printed copies? What?

 

It does make a difference because "garbage in – garbage out." In this case, if you have poor quality documents going into the process you cannot expect miracles to appear in the results. Things that can affect the quality of OCR include:

  1. damage to document: folds, coffee stains, writing on page, etc.
  2. poor quality printing: (think mimeograph), faded print, low resolution/fuzzy, tiny text
  3. nuances with OCR, often times, letter combinations play havoc with OCR (the letters "r" & "i" may transition from "ri" into "n." hyphenated words at the end of a line are not rejoined, so if a line ends with "para-" and continues with "graph..." the OCR will not join them.

 

As far as your images go, they will not be affected by the OCR.

 

If you leave the results of Acrobat OCR work in place, be aware that what you see may not be what you have within the search-able text. By that I mean that if you are searching for the word "paragraph," it will not find "para-" and "graph." In addition, if there is a just plain screw up. you might see "mimeograph" but the actual text might be something quite different (this would come from the result of a poor OCR result). Both of these can be found by doing an examination of the results that might take a few minutes or more depending on the OCR issues mentioned above.

 

One other thing that has me a bit concerned is that you talk about editing. While you can do touch-up editing in Acrobat Pro DC, like fixing "from" to "form," the editing within Acrobat is not intended nor designed to do wholesale alteration. So if you wish to end up with digital documents like Word, IF you use Acrobat Pro DC, you will then have to convert the PDFs into docx documents and that can be tricky. I've written too much here to go into that now but suffice it to say there are some tricks that you have to do to make this a "normal" Word document. If this is the case, you might be better off going to an alternate OCR software platform to do the conversion and not use Acrobat Pro DC. I'm sorry but I cannot recommend one to you.

 

And lastly lastly, the one thing I didn't mention above but MUST be considered is the quality of the scanning. Poor quality scanning can also have significant affects upon the final result. I wrote a blog for Adobe on this, you can read this here:

 

http://photosbycoyne.com/Gary's_Help/Scanning/clean-scanning.html

 

After you've waken up from all this reading, let me know if you have any other questions. You've got a lot ahead of you.

M
mbbloomAuthor
Participant
July 14, 2020

Thank you, thank you for the information. I actually understood most of it! And, I'll check out the blog.

So, editing will be needed; I can handle that. And, garbage in-garbage out is a good mantra. I have "originals" that are several generations-old copies (modern day mimeographs;) I'll prepare those differently. I am now wondering what it will do with a full-colored background, textbook page...  But, I also several crisp, first generaton copies from an HP Envy 4500 all-in-one (scanning included.)   It seems to produce good scans for print and digital storage. 

My use of the term editable plays into the Read & Write app. It does word definitions, language translations, and reads the text to students. So, it needs to be very accessible, no wholesale alteration, just the ability to recognize most of the text. 

You've given me lots to consider and I'm taking it to the next step to address some of your cautions and continue research. I will make an appointment with my Geek Squad and get the Pro DC trail downloaded to see what I'm able to do, what problems I can generate, and how it works within Google.

I appreciate your time. MBBloom

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