Guides
Half the job is knowing where the number lives in the first place. These cover that, and are honest about when you do not need a tool at all.
Utility meters
How to Read My Electric Meter From a Photo
How to read my electric meter correctly from a photo: which digits count, why red numbers are ignored, dial meters, Economy 7 rows, and where OCR trips up.
How to Take Meter Readings Across a Building
How to take meter readings for thirty meters rather than one: waking a smart meter's display, what to record beside each number, and where a phone stops helping.
Water Meter OCR: Reading a Meter From a Photo
Water meter OCR is harder than it looks: fogged glass, red sweep hands and odometer digits mid-roll. What to photograph, and which digits actually get reported.
Numbers
Best Coupon Scanner Apps, and What They Miss
A coupon scanner app reads the barcode. It cannot read an alphanumeric promo code, and that gap is where most people get stuck. Here is what works for each.
Best Number Scanner Apps for iPhone and Android
Every number scanner app on the App Store is really a document scanner. Compared on live store data: ratings, languages, size, and what each one actually reads.
Decimal Separator: 1,234.56 or 1.234,56?
The decimal separator is a comma across most of Europe and a point in the US. Same quantity, two spellings, and a scanner that guesses wrong moves the value.
Extract Phone Numbers From an Image or Photo
Extract phone numbers from an image: the free tools that already do it, the numbering rules that catch misreads, and how to clean the list before you dial.
Image to Excel: the Traps in Data From Picture
Image to Excel works well until a long number appears. Excel's Data from Picture, the 15-digit ceiling, lost leading zeros, and how to avoid each of them.
Inventory Count App: Counting Stock by Camera
An inventory count app that reads labels beats retyping, but a barcode beats both. What makes a label read badly, and what to do when there is no barcode.
Numbers Stored as Text: Why SUM Returns Zero
Numbers stored as text look identical to numbers and SUM ignores every one of them. How the coercion fails, how to prove it, and how to repair the column.
OCR Accuracy: Why Numbers Come Out Wrong
OCR accuracy is quoted per character, which hides the real problem. On a long number the whole string is what matters, and that falls away fast. Here is the maths.
Copy-blocked text
How to Copy Text From Telegram When It Is Blocked
How to copy text from Telegram when a channel has Restrict Saving Content switched on: what the setting blocks, what it cannot reach, and the screenshot route.
How to Copy Text That Cannot Be Copied
How to copy text that cannot be copied: browser fixes for user-select none, what to do in locked apps and PDFs, and when a screenshot plus OCR is faster.
Screenshots
Best Free OCR Apps for iPhone and Android
The best free OCR app is already on your phone. Here is an honest ranking of the ten worth installing anyway, with real App Store ratings and app sizes.
How to Copy Text From a Screenshot
How to copy text from a screenshot on iPhone, Android, Windows and Mac with tools you already have, plus the cases where built-in text recognition fails.