There appears to be a problem with your install.
1 Every scanner/MFD I've seen for a
long time installs OCR software, standard. Many HP devices use (or at least used to use) a version of the ReadIRIS OCR system. The built-in 'scan to OCR' function merely calls up the OCR software.
2 most (all, in my experience, but there might be one out there that doesn't) OCR software reads from most/all graphics formats, with a preference for PDF, TIFF, and JPG files. If, for some reason, the direct scan-to-OCR system doesn't work, the OCR software will take a graphic file as input and will output your choice of TXT, RTF, or DOC files. I don't know of any system which scans directly to TXT or RTF. All of them go by some graphics format first.
3 the built-in scan-to-OCR function in many HP devices has problems actually working, mostly because the built-in press-a-button-and-scan-directly-to-a-file function has problems actually working 'cause HP's drivers stink. However, if you launch the actual OCR software and scan from there, it usually works. I was sufficiently impressed with ReadIRIS that I went and got the standard version of their software rather than relying on the crippled, specific-to-HP, version that shipped with my old HP PSC1350 MFD. I still use ReadIRIS for more complex OCR jobs, despite having long since junked the PSC1350. (It hit Leopard and bounced.)
4 simple OCR jobs can work quite well from Adobe Acrobat Professional, if you have it. Acrobat has a problem with more complex jobs, which is why I use ReadIRIS for serious OCR, but will handle quick&dirty OCR and will do it faster than ReadIRIS.
5 if you have MS Office you should have a primitive OCR system which Microsoft ships as part of the Office package. It's not the best, but it should work for simple documents.
What OCR software, exactly, shipped with your device? You will need dedicated OCR software. If HP has stopped bundling ReadIRIS you need to identify what OCR software they now bundle, and you might want to consider buying dedicated OCR software if you plan on doing a lot of OCR work. The top three Mac OCR software packages are OmniPage, ABBYY, and ReadIRIS. <http://desktoppub.about.com/od/mac/tp/ocr_mac.htm> I like ReadIRIS and use v11 without problems. (The current version is 12, but I see no real need to update at this time. YMMV.)
