OCR by smart rule action leaves phantom document in place; Bug?

I’m trying to use a smart rule to OCR a document (and do other things, but I stripped the actions down to just OCR followed by Cancel).

Running the smart rule either on import or on demand results in the document being OCR’d (file kind PDF + text), but the listing of the original document remains as well. (file kind PDF Document). Clicking on that entry yields this error:
FIle Missing: /users//Library/Application Support/DEVONthink 3/(previous file location within DT3).

OCR with the context menu (OCR > to searchable PDF) works as expected.

The smart rule:

Try the action OCR > Apply instead.

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I was able to reproduce the issue, either use OCR > Apply or disable the option to move the original to the trash (see Preferences > OCR). Version 3.0.1 will fix this.

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Excellent. Thanks to you both.

You’re welcome :slight_smile:

I am having a similar problem. I am on 3.0.1. The rule keep leaving the non-OCRed pdf in the original folder. I´ve tried OCR > Apply, enabling or disabling to move the original to the trash, etc.
41%20PM

Welcome @jorgezajgla

It’s not a bug at all.You need to follow the basic logic and inputs of the actions.

Look at your smart rule. What are you initially acting on? A TIFF image.
You:

  • Change the TIFF’s name
  • Convert the TIFF to a PDF.
  • Apply OCR to the TIFF
  • File the TIFF.
  • Display a notification.

So the smart rule followed your instructions to the letter.

A few things here:

  1. You can use a Convert & Continue action to switch the current input to the converted file.
  2. The Convert step is unnecessary as OCR operates on raster images (and in fact, has long before people started doing OCR on PDFs).
  3. Since there is no OCR & Continue action at this time, OCR > Apply is a good option since it doesn’t generate a new file.
  4. You can easily do the Move to a destination folder before the OCR. However, if the destination folder has smart rules attached, you may not want to do the Move first. This would be highly dependent on other smart rules you have running.

Here is a modified (simplified) version…
15%20PM

Thanks!

You’rw welcome :slight_smile: