REDMOND, Wash. -- May 31, 2001 - Microsoft Corp. today announced Office Document Imaging, a new tool included in more than 20 language versions of Microsoft Office XP. The tool gives users the ability to integrate hard-copy documents into their Office XP workflow. Users can scan and index paper documents within Office XP to search and retrieve them for reference, or to integrate the recognized text into their Office applications. Office Document Imaging makes it easier for users to find and reuse paper-based corporate knowledge. An integral part of Office Document Imaging is optical character recognition (OCR) software licensed from ScanSoft Inc (Nasdaq “SSFT”). OCR recognizes words in scanned document images. As a result, the text can be repurposed into Office applications such as Microsoft Word or the Outlook messaging and collaboration client. The entire content of the scanned document is indexed, allowing users to search for any word in the document. Using the Search function in Office, users will be able to retrieve both electronic and scanned document images. "Although the traditional office aspires to become paperless, the integration of paper-based documents into a standard office workflow has been a difficult challenge," said Larry Engel, product unit manager at Microsoft. "We are now addressing the concerns of integrating page images seamlessly into the standard Office applications, with the ease of a common user interface. Although it may not achieve the goal of the totally paperless office, it will help in making processes less paper-intensive and time-consuming. Scansoft's technology provides the perfect complement to our focus on providing an Office-like user experience for capturing paper documents." Customers that have more advanced repurposing needs for their image documents can purchase ScanSoft's OmniPage Pro OCR software. This powerful product enables users to completely repurpose their documents, including text styles, page layouts, tables, graphics and pictures, into Office applications such as Word, Excel, the PowerPoint presentation graphics program, Access and the FrontPage Web-site creation and management tool. More information can be found at http://www.scansoft.com/products/omnipage/.