1. A method for reading an address field on mail items, comprising the steps of: locating and reading said address field and if said address field cannot be located and read, scanning a surface of a mail item, said surface comprising said address field; forming a signature of said surface, said signature comprising position and outlines of a select number of typographic fields of said surface; searching a database for a match between said signature and another signature; where a match is found, importing field address information from said database associated with said another signature and repeating said step of locating and reading in said imported field address; where a match is not found, forwarding scanned surface to an encoding device, manually encoding said surface, storing said signature and address field information in said database and repeating said step of locating and reading in a field address indicated in said encoding.