Hi Jamie
Yes, I have, in fact! I'll use this as an opportunity to rant about how disppointed I am in Canon. It is clear from both the US and UK forums that many users have missed MP Navigator EX. These are all loyal Canon users who have upgraded their printers to newer models and assumed that Canon wouldn't have downgraded the software in the meantime. Users have asked why the software doesn't work, whether it can be made to work and have begged for Canon to implement it. The response has never been any more helpful than "It doesn't support the Canon MX922," which has left many users high and dry. The "support" forum is also a farce. You will see that I posted three requests above, none of which were answered. It seems that the forum system is used so that Canon can pick and choose which technical support problems they actually answer, ignoring those that might raise a bit of a contentious issue. Users would like to know WHY the excellent software was left out of the latest printers/scanners. Is it being completely redeveloped? Is there a genuine technical reason why the software couldn't work with the MX922? Or (most likely) was one of the components in the software too expensive and was removed in a cost-cutting exercise?
Rant over.
Yes, it took many hours and I tested about 10 different scanning / pdf apps and finally found Foxit PhantomPDF. It's not free - about $90 after the first month. It crashes a lot and the English used in the help pages / dialog boxes is a bit "special" .
I appreciate that $90 is a lot of money, but it was essential for my business, as Canon left me up a creek without a paddle. I will recoup this extra cost by never using a genuine Canon ink cartridge again in my life. If Canon can't support its users then we shouldn't feel the need to support its consumables. Sorry, I'm ranting again.
It is a bit fiddly to get to work with the scanner in the first place. You need to enable the TWAIN driver and scan using the "Convert from scanner" option in the menu, Do'nt try to configure the scanner from the PhantomPDF software. I tried for ages, and it loses your saved settings every time it upgrades. Just choose scan and let it open the TWAIN / ScanGear window. I get best results using the presets in Basic mode (Document (Greyscale) ADF Duplex) etc., rather than tweaking the settings in advanced mode. The software will scan all of your documents into one big pdf. Save the big document as you will lose all of your scans if the software crashes.
The silver lining is that, once it is working, it is much better than MP Navigator EX.
Using the 'Organise' tab, you can drag and drop the pages of the document into any order you wish. You can "Extract" pages into new documents and save each document as a separate file. The OCR is excellent - it recognises far more text than the MP Nav software although it is much slower. You can set it to OCR as it scans, or select the pages to OCR once it's scanned.
Funnily enough, I've barely used the PhantomPDF for its real pupose - as a PDF editor. It's very useful for highlighting paragraphs and adding notes. It's also got a PDF virtual printer which is the first that I've found that allows me to print password-protected PDFs to an unprotected PDF file, which is essential for my work.
As it's not Adobe or Microsoft (or Canon, for that matter), support for registered users is via a support ticket system, giving a personalised response within a couple of days. There is the occasional misunderstanding, as English doesn't appear to be their first language, but we managed to resolve my initial setup problems.
Sorry for the long response but I hope you find this useful.
Nick
