"Couldn't set the languages library for the OCR engine"

DEVONthink Tips
1

I’m a long-time owner of DEVONthink Pro Office. I used it for a couple of years for research projects then fell away from it for a bit. I’ve kept the application updated and have planned to move my research files back into it.

I’m in the process of doing that now but am running into a consistent problem with the import of any PDF documents that are not PDF + text. None of these, no matter the language of origin (French + English) nor the resolution (+150 dpi in all cases), will convert to PDF + text. All of the documents that have failed to convert can be converted by FineReader. In every case, when I select an image-only file for PDF conversion within DPO I get this error message:

Couldn’t set the languages library for the OCR engine.
ERR_BAD_ARGUMENT

This happens for DEVONthink Pro Office 2.9.15, under macOS 10.12.6. A small but significant number of the pdfs I’d like to import are high-res, so this is a show-stopper for me.

I welcome any advice that may be offered.

2

Try this…

  1. Quit DEVONthink.
  2. In the Finder, press Command-Shift-G and paste: ~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink Pro 2
  3. Move the ABBYY folder to your Desktop and relaunch DEVONthink.
  4. Select the DEVONthink Pro Office menu > Install Add-Ons… and reinstall the ABBYY FineReader OCR.
  5. Quit and relaunch DEVONthink.
  6. Attempt the OCR again.
3

That seems to have done the trick. Thanks!