Importing texts into my private collection

Hello there! I wonder if there is a solution to my problem. I tried to scan and import a chapter from a book of Paolo Coelho translated into Russian. Although it was saved correctly in my MacBook and I could read it after saving it, the text changed into hieroglyphs at the very moment I dropped it into LingQ. What do I need to do to copy and keep the text in the form in which it was saved?

It’s difficult to say… What you might want to try doing is emailing the file to yourself then opening it within the browser. Sometimes the browser will handle the text better than Preview on your Macbook.

Thanks, Alex. I tried that a moment ago and actually managed to copy the text and to drop it in “Import” without changes, but when I clicked on the “save” button, it was treated as if the text did not exist (invisible text). I saw “You have to fill in the part for the text.” I guess there is really nothing that can be done. Do other computers have the same problem? Or is it a problem just with my Mac?

When you scanned the text, did you save it as a .pdf? I wonder if you’re able to copy and paste it into TextEdit, as it seems the issue is with the formatting of the original file.

An obvious question: Did you check the encoding? Lingq wants to see Unicode (UTF-8).

I had the same problem with my Mac . I imported a text which appeared to be there but couldn’t save it and I got the same error message as you mentioned. I tried a few times, then I noticed on the paste window I had some paste options, one of which was for something like “retain Mac format” . I used that option and it solved the problem. I just tried to reproduce this but can’t. Perhaps this paste option only appears if some incompatiblity is detected . So, check your paste options and if there is a Mac option listed try that. I should add that this has only happened once - normally I can paste text in without problems.

I’m not sure what exactly the retain Mac format option is, but if you copy and paste text into the Text field, you can click the little paintbrush icon at the bottom to clean up any messy code. This will basically show you what your pasted text will appear like if you opened the lesson.

Thanks to all of you. I tried the email option without success and the little pain brush did absolutely nothing to clean the mess. As for the Unicode, there is a list of languages in my system preferences indicating “Unicode,” “Roman” or “Cyrillic.” Since Russian uses Cyrillic, I don’t see how I could get it in the LingQ. What puzzles me is that I have copied and pasted many Russian texts by Chekhov, Turgenev and Tolstoy from different library sites and never had that problem. It only does it when I paste a Russian text that I scan. I worked on this during my lesson with the technician in the Apple store in Ann Arbor, but he was also unable to help me with it. I guess I just forget it and start typing …

I perhaps should’ve mentioned that you need to highlight the text before clicking the paintbrush. Does this help at all? If it still doesn’t work, are you able to email this file to LingQ Support so we can take a look at what the problem might be?

Having had a look at the file you emailed, there appears to be nothing that we can do to fix this. The issue lies in the OCR that was used to identify the text in the scanned document, and it appears that it isn’t very good with this specific text.
In this case, perhaps the best thing to do is just type it out or have someone type it for you.

Thanks again, Alex. Do you type well?

Hehe, I’m pretty quick, but it’s a shame I don’t know how to type in Cyrillic :stuck_out_tongue: