--- title: "OfficeBrief FAQ" description: "Supported formats, OCR languages, offline operation, compliance posture, smart-card scanning and what each licensing tier includes. Answered plainly." url: "https://royalsoftworks.com/products/office-brief/faq/" source: "https://royalsoftworks.com" format: "markdown" note: "Markdown rendering of the HTML page at `url`. Same content, same canonical URL." --- FAQ # Straight answers, no asterisks. The questions buyers ask most before rolling OfficeBrief out to a team. 01 What is OfficeBrief? OfficeBrief is a desktop file manager with built-in document tools — a dual-pane file browser, full-text content search across documents, local OCR via Tesseract, document conversion through LibreOffice, mass rename with regex, ZIP/Unzip, template-based document printing, and smart-card ID scanning. It runs entirely on Windows, macOS, and Linux with no cloud connection. 02 Does OfficeBrief require a cloud connection? No. OfficeBrief is fully offline. All document processing — OCR, content search, conversion, archive handling, template printing — runs on your own machine. There are no external API calls. 03 Is OfficeBrief HIPAA and GDPR compliant? OfficeBrief is compatible with HIPAA and GDPR requirements by architecture: because all processing and storage happen on your own infrastructure, you keep complete data sovereignty and never hand documents to a third party. Compliance is ultimately a program your organization runs, not a checkbox a vendor ships — but the tool itself never gives you a reason to fail an audit on data residency. 04 What document formats does OfficeBrief support? Preview and content search across DOCX, DOC, PDF, XLSX, XLS, PPTX, ODP, ODS, ODT and plain text. OCR reads PNG, JPG, JPEG, BMP, TIFF, and WEBP images via Tesseract. Document conversion (via LibreOffice) covers PDF, HTML, DOCX, and TXT. 05 Is there any AI in OfficeBrief? No. OfficeBrief is a traditional desktop file manager with document utilities. The content search is plain-text substring matching, not semantic. OCR uses Tesseract, a deterministic open-source recognition engine. There are no embeddings, no LLM, and no AI classification anywhere in the product. 06 What languages does OCR support today? OfficeBrief's OCR currently recognizes English text. Multi-language recognition (additional Tesseract language packs) is on the roadmap; we'd rather ship a feature once it's reliable than advertise a language mode that isn't fully wired up yet. 07 How does template-based printing work? Pick a .docx template that contains placeholders like {firstName} or {caseNumber}. OfficeBrief scans the template and lists every placeholder it finds, you map each one to a value, and it renders a filled document and sends it straight to print — without needing Word installed. Mappings can be saved and reused, so a repeat form is a few clicks the second time. 08 What does the smart-card scanner actually read? With a PC/SC-compatible reader attached, OfficeBrief reads the card's identification data through a small platform-native reader component and can feed the result directly into a template's fields — useful for ID checks at a front desk or registration window. If no reader is plugged in, the feature simply stays inactive; nothing else in the app is affected. 09 Are the Free, Pro, and Enterprise tiers different builds? No — every install has the same engine underneath. The tiers are about usage ceilings and support (batch size, OCR throughput, smart-card access, volume licensing), not locked-away code paths.