Zones and the Document Viewer (zone mode)

Zones can be viewed, edited, and removed using the Document Viewer (zone mode) window. A document can contain one or more zones, and each zone can be configured for a specific purpose. Once you add zones either automatically or manually to the reference document, you can test results on any of your sample documents.

You can press and hold the Ctrl key and click to select multiple zones. Alternatively, you can lasso several zones with your mouse or press Ctrl + A to select all zones. Press Ctrl + click to deselect a selected zone. Once your zones are selected you can delete or move the selected zones.

Note You can move multiple zones and deselect zones in the Advanced Zone Locator only. You can move one zone at a time in the A2iA Zone Locator.

There are three different types of zones that can be manually added to a document.

  • A Text Zone Add Text Zone icon extracts handwritten and machine printed text from a document. The text can have multiple lines like a postal address (Zone0 in the above example), single lines like a purchase order number (Zone7), or be contained in boxes like a credit card number (Zone8).

  • An OMR Zone (Optical Mark Recognition) Add OMR Zone icon checks for check boxes, also known as mark grids, and determines whether an option is selected. This zone is used with other OMR zones, such as Zones 1 through 5 and with an OMR group zone when a document contains a single field with multiple check boxes.

  • An OMR Group Zone Add OMR Group Zone icon groups several OMR zones together, such as a “Method of payment” field (Zone6).

For example, a zone can be used to extract an address that is machine printed while another extracts the value from a group of check boxes. The following image shows examples of zones and different content.


Example image with several zones on a document