📝 Proofreader with Crop Tool – Help

This guide explains how to paste text, upload documents, crop areas for OCR, and review spell-check results.

↩️ Back to App

1. Overview

The Proofreader with Crop Tool lets you:

  • Paste plain text and run a spell check.
  • Upload files (PDF, DOCX, PPTX, TXT, HTML, images) and extract text.
  • Use a crop tool to OCR only a specific region of a page or image.
  • Search through results and manage a custom dictionary stored in your browser.
Main dashboard showing paste text, upload, crop, and results sections
Figure 1 – Main interface with left-side controls and right-side results.

2. Checking Pasted Text

  1. In the ✍️ Paste Text card, click inside the text area.
  2. Paste or type your text.
  3. Watch the live character & word count under the box.
  4. Click ✅ Check to run a spell check.

The results will appear on the right under 📊 Results. Misspelled words are highlighted and listed with suggestions.

Paste text area with character and word count
Figure 2 – Paste text area with live character and word count.

3. Uploading Files

3.1 Supported formats

You can upload multiple files at once (up to 10MB each):

  • Documents: PDF, DOCX, PPTX, TXT, HTML
  • Images: JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF

3.2 Steps

  1. In the 📂 Upload card, click Select Files.
  2. Choose one or more files from your computer.
  3. Each file appears in the list with size and status:
  • ⏳ Ready – waiting to be processed.
  • ⚙️ OCR – currently being processed.
  • ✅ Done – spell check completed.
  • ❌ Error – something went wrong.

Use 🗑️ Clear All Files to remove all uploaded files from the list.

File upload card with file list and statuses
Figure 3 – Upload card showing multiple files and their statuses.

4. Running Spell Check on Files

  1. Upload one or more files (see section 3).
  2. Ensure the dictionary is loaded (the ✅ Run Check button will be enabled).
  3. Click ✅ Run Check in the Actions card.
  4. Watch the progress bar update as files are processed.
  5. When finished, each file appears in the 📊 Results section with:
    • Total word count.
    • Number of detected errors.
    • Extracted text with misspellings highlighted.
Actions card with Run Check button and progress bar
Figure 4 – Running spell check with live progress.

5. Using the Crop Tool (OCR on a Region)

5.1 Enabling cropping for a file

  1. Upload a file (PDF, DOCX, PPTX, TXT/HTML, or image).
  2. In the file list, click the ✂️ Crop button next to that file.
  3. The ✂️ Crop Area card will appear.
File list with a Crop button next to a file
Figure 5 – Using the Crop button to open the crop tool for a specific file.

5.2 Navigating pages

For multi‑page documents (like PDFs and PPTX), the app renders each page as an image:

  • Use ← Previous and Next → in the Page Navigator to move between pages.
  • The label shows: Page X of Y.

5.3 Selecting an area

  1. Inside the crop area, click and drag to draw a rectangle around the text you want.
  2. The selection is outlined in blue, and coordinates are shown in the 📍 info bar.
  3. A preview of your selection appears in the Crop Preview panel.

Use these controls:

  • 📐 Fit to Screen – scales the canvas so the page fits in the visible area.
  • 1:1 Actual Size – shows the image at its original resolution.
  • Space + drag – pan around the page when zoomed in.
  • ↩️ Reset – clears the selection and resets zoom/pan.
Crop area showing a drawn selection and preview
Figure 6 – Selecting a region on a page and previewing the cropped area.

5.4 Extracting text from the crop

  1. After selecting an area, click 📄 Extract.
  2. The app will:
    • Run OCR on the cropped image region.
    • Spell-check the recognized text.
  3. A new result entry appears on the right (labelled with the crop size, e.g. Cropped (800×400px)).
  4. Optionally, click 💾 Download to save the cropped image.

6. Settings & Dictionaries

6.1 OCR settings

  • Enable OCR – allows extracting text from images or using OCR on scans.
  • Auto-detect Scanned – when enabled, PDF pages with little embedded text are treated as scanned pages and processed via OCR (hybrid mode).

6.2 Dictionary selection

Use the Dictionary dropdown to choose:

  • English (US) – default US spelling.
  • English (UK) – UK spelling (if you provide a UK aff/dic pair).
  • Custom – extend with your own word list.

6.3 Custom dictionary

When you choose Custom, a section appears where you can:

  • Upload Dictionary – import a .txt or .dic file (one word per line).
  • Paste Words – manually type or paste words (one per line).
  • Click 📖 Load to add them to your custom dictionary.

In the results panel, you can also click ➕ Add to Dictionary next to any misspelled word. Those words are:

  • Stored in localStorage in your browser.
  • Counted under Custom words in the Results header.
  • Ignored in future checks.

6.4 Downloading your custom dictionary

  1. After adding words, open the 📊 Results panel.
  2. Click 💾 Download Dictionary.
  3. A .txt file will be downloaded with all your custom words (one per line), sorted alphabetically.
Results header showing Download Dictionary button and custom word count
Figure 7 – Managing and exporting your custom dictionary.

7. Searching Within Results

Once you have results, the Search card appears on the right.

7.1 Basic search

  1. Type a word or phrase into the Search results... box.
  2. Matches are highlighted in the result text using a yellow background.
  3. Use the small ↑ and ↓ buttons to jump between matches.

You can limit what is searched using the checkboxes:

  • Misspelled Words – search only the error list for each file.
  • Filename – search by file names.
  • Full Text – search the full extracted content.

Click the ✖️ button to clear the search and remove highlights.

Search bar above results with highlighted matches
Figure 8 – Searching across filenames, misspellings, and full text.

8. Downloading Extracted Text

For each result (file or crop), you can download the extracted text:

  1. Find the file in the 📊 Results list.
  2. Click the 💾 Download Text button.
  3. A .txt file containing that result’s text will be saved to your computer.

9. Troubleshooting

9.1 Buttons are disabled

  • Make sure the dictionary files (index.aff and index.dic) are available and load correctly.
  • For ✅ Check on pasted text, ensure the text area is not empty.
  • For ✅ Run Check, upload at least one file.

9.2 OCR doesn’t run

  • Ensure Enable OCR is checked for image files or scanned PDFs.
  • If you get an OCR error, try again; the Tesseract worker is re‑initialized automatically after failures.

9.3 Custom dictionary not remembered

  • The app uses the browser’s localStorage. If you clear site data or use private browsing, your custom words may not persist.