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ABBYY FormDesigner is a software application for creating machine-readable forms that will be processed using ABBYY FlexiCapture, a forms processing application. Form design is an important stage of form creation, because all the other stages (scanning, recognition, verification, and export) depend on the correctness of the initial form and its suitability for machine processing.

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Built for machine-readable forms

Unlike general-purpose editors such as MS Visio, CorelDRAW, or MS Word, ABBYY FormDesigner has been developed specifically for creating machine-readable forms. In those applications, users must take extra measures to make sure their forms meet the machine-readability requirements, such as measuring form elements and monitoring their shape and location on the form. ABBYY FormDesigner has a straightforward interface and includes tools for creating the standard elements commonly found on machine-readable forms. You can create black and white forms as well as color dropout forms. Form elements are automatically designed with machine input in mind, and the program checks each form to ensure that it can be processed by computer.

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How it works with ABBYY FlexiCapture

After you have created a form in ABBYY FormDesigner, you get a ready form description that can be used to create a Document Definition in ABBYY FlexiCapture. A Document Definition describes form elements and tells data capture applications where to look for particular types of information on the form, ensuring correct and reliable recognition of the entered data. ABBYY FormDesigner therefore carries out two tasks: it makes form development easy, and it simplifies the ABBYY FlexiCapture setup process so that ABBYY FlexiCapture can process the forms with minimum human involvement.

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Publish and save forms

ABBYY FormDesigner allows you to publish your forms (that is, protect them from accidental changes or editing), as well as to save your forms in various image formats before sending them to a printing shop.