diff --git a/admin-lehrer/components/ocr-overlay/usePixelWordPositions.ts b/admin-lehrer/components/ocr-overlay/usePixelWordPositions.ts
index b7b1b27..b4872b9 100644
--- a/admin-lehrer/components/ocr-overlay/usePixelWordPositions.ts
+++ b/admin-lehrer/components/ocr-overlay/usePixelWordPositions.ts
@@ -59,7 +59,28 @@ export function usePixelWordPositions(
       for (const cell of cells) {
         if (!cell.bbox_pct || !cell.text) continue
 
-        const groups = cell.text.split(/\s{3,}/).map(s => s.trim()).filter(Boolean)
+        const rawGroups = cell.text.split(/\s{3,}/).map(s => s.trim()).filter(Boolean)
+
+        // Merge single-char symbol groups (OCR artifacts from box borders like "|", ">")
+        // with their neighbour to avoid polluting the cluster-to-group matching
+        const groups: string[] = []
+        for (let gi = 0; gi < rawGroups.length; gi++) {
+          const g = rawGroups[gi]
+          const isArtifact = g.length <= 2 && !/[a-zA-Z0-9\u00C0-\u024F]/.test(g)
+          if (isArtifact) {
+            if (gi + 1 < rawGroups.length) {
+              // merge with next group
+              rawGroups[gi + 1] = g + '  ' + rawGroups[gi + 1]
+            } else if (groups.length > 0) {
+              // last group — merge with previous
+              groups[groups.length - 1] += '  ' + g
+            } else {
+              groups.push(g)
+            }
+          } else {
+            groups.push(g)
+          }
+        }
 
         let cx: number, cy: number
         const cw = Math.round(cell.bbox_pct.w / 100 * imgW)