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SOFTWARE TIPS - Concordance

Importing PDF Files

Importing PDF files into Concordance is a simple but powerful feature. All your PDF text automatically will be extracted and loaded into Concordance for indexing and searching, while maintaining the original document for viewing. It's the best of both worlds.

Simply create your database using the Concordance PDF Database template. Building your database on our PDF template creates the links to the original file for you, and uses Adobe Acrobat as the viewer. The entire loading and linking process is automatic.

In Concordance choose "Documents" "Import" "Full Text." On the "Import/Full Text" screen, Select "Import," then Select the file type "PDF." If you need to import more than a few hundred, choose "Bulk Import PDF files."

Concordance creates a connection to Acrobat through the Concordance camera button. A menu item is also added for printing the entire query through Acrobat. This allows automated printing of all the original files in their native format, including graphics, fonts and any other special formatting.

Creating Authority Lists

Concordance’s Tools/List File Management is an extremely versatile Authority List manager. Authority lists are perfect for managing controlled vocabulary fields, and for requiring quality control where it’s needed.

For example, you can require a choice from a predetermined list of document types, whenever the cursor is placed in the DT (Document Type) field. Select "Edit" and then "Validation," and check "Required for data entry" to enable this feature.

Concordance can import text files to create authority lists, or can scan entries from an existing database. Once the list file has been created, pick the "Import/Export" tab and select "Import". Select the text file to import, and Concordance will build the list file from your text.

To build the list file from your database, use the "Authority List" tab to select the field and document range to scan. Concordance will read the text from the database and build the list file from those entries.

Selectable Field Indexing

Any field (paragraph, text, numeric, even dates) can be indexed and its words added to your search dictionary. From the "File/Modify" dialog box, Click "Indexed" for any field when creating or modifying your database.

Query Editing

It can be time consuming when users type a long search and realize they have made an error. You can edit the search by clicking on the "Search Review" (Search History) button. Select the query to edit, and click the Pencil Icon on the bottom left corner of your screen to edit your query.

Loading OCR Files

To load OCR into Concordance, first you must have an image field identified. Most often this is the same as the beginning document number. The image key has to match the OCR text file name.

The filenames should be unique for each record.
The file extension is not required.
All the OCR for one document should be saved in one file.

The database also should have a field to import the OCR text into. In the unlikely event there are OCR files larger than 8MB, add multiple fields to contain all the OCR. Concordance automatically will overflow any OCR into the next paragraph field down.

Loading OCR into Concordance requires you to use a CPL. The "Readocr.cpl" will scan the database, read each matching text file name, fetch the text file, and overlay that text onto the record. Go to the Dataflight Web site at www.dataflight.com to download a copy of "Readocr.cpl" from the CPL section.

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