I have an older model I bought 10 years ago, still works like a champ. They’re not cheap, but they scan fast and support OCR out of the box. If she’s shopping for a new document scanner, and has a lot of documents to scan, she could look at the ScanSnap line.

If your friend is in no hurry, she could keep an eye open for a deal, although if you need their functionality all 3 apps are, to me, well worth their list price. PDFPen and Prizmo have, in the past, regularly popped up on sale or as part of a bundle. I don’t have much need for that, so haven’t used it very often, but the few times I have used it I got good results. I haven't had a need for that, as I primarily use PDFpen Pro often to create and fill in PDF forms, and to markup PDF documents.Ĭreaceed’s Prizmo is focused on scanning and OCR. Both claim to scan, OCR and export to Microsoft Word. Smile Software’s PDFpen and PDFpen Pro support scanning and OCR, on top of their comprehensive PDF editing / annotation capabilities. If you want to continue using old scanners, or have complete control over your scan settings, VueScan’s the ticket. It’s updated often, I believe primarily to add additional scanner support. It may seem expensive, but I bought a professional license 10+ years ago and have never been asked for an upgrade fee. It claims to do OCR text, but I’ve never used it for that so can’t confirm. It’s not pretty, and it can be overwhelming for a scanning novice, but it’s feature rich, performs very well, and supports 100s of scanners. Hamrick Software’s VueScan is an outstanding application. I’d hold off installing it until prompted it's needed.

Some OEM scanning software may require the manufacturer’s driver be installed in order to work with the scanner (VueScan sometimes does). She may or may not need it, but good to go ahead and download it now just in case. My experience, Canon stops updating scanner drivers after a few years, but I’ve managed to install and use them on later macOS versions than are officially supported. She should first check Canon’s web site for that scanner’s latest macOS driver.

Almost 8 years old now, but she can probably continue to use it if she wants to, if the scanning software she chooses supports it. I have done very little OCR scanning, and I’m still running Sierra, but maybe I can still point you in a few directions that could prove helpful.ĭid a quick check, looks like that scanner came out in 2010 or thereabouts.

Best document scanner for mac 2017