Mac Roundtable Podcast Goes Paperless
August 28, 2008
I have to admit, I was not too familiar with the Mac Roundtable podcast until I saw people talking about it on Twitter.
It caught my attention because the latest episode is all about going paperless, and the ScanSnap gets a lot of love in it.
The podcast doesn’t just focus on the scanning aspect of going paperless, but the workflows and tools involved.
There’s also a good discussion of the security involved – how do you keep confidential information secure (or do you need to?) and how comfortable are you with information “in the cloud”.
One interesting thing is that a number of the roundtablers seem to be migrating to Evernote for their document storage.
Personally, I love Evernote for capturing, well, notes and things I want to capture/get access to on the fly, but I have resisted using it for my document storage.
Why? Well, as you know I am all about the online backups and the cloud, but I just like the control and security of having my primary document storage and OCR-ing here on my machine first. If Evernote went away tomorrow, I would still have all my documents in searchable PDF format.
Evernote is definitely one to watch though – it seems to be getting lots of traction.
One takeaway for me is to look into having at least my sensitive documents stored in an encrypted disk image. I believe David Sparks mentioned that he does that.
The episode is great and I have now subscribed to the podcast. Even if you are not a Mac user, I recommend taking a listen at least to the first “going paperless” section.
My ScanSnap Setup And Workflow – Post Scan Processing
August 11, 2008
This is Part 2 of the My ScanSnap Setup And Workflow series. Make sure to check out Part 1 – ScanSnap Settings.
Now that we have set up ScanSnap Manager with my four profiles, here is what I do with the files.
At first I started using DevonThink Pro Office, but I found that it was a little overkill for my needs. If I had a huge amount of documents that I needed regular access to it would be perfect, but for my home needs I wanted to go with something a little more lightweight.
One main drawback (maybe the only one) is that my ScanSnap S300M did not come with any OCR software in the box. I could download a form to have ReadIris Pro 11 mailed to me, but that didn’t help me at first.
Luckily, I had Adobe Acrobat Professional already, so I decided to use that for my ScanSnap workflow. If you have the ScanSnap S1500 or S1500M, your scanner will come with Acrobat already.
Really Boring, Really Fast
Excited to start OCR’ing up a storm, I set ScanSnap Manager to output to Acrobat and away I went.
It worked quite well. I would hit the button, it would open the resulting file in Acrobat, and then I would go Document | OCR Text Recognition | Recognize Text Using OCR and follow the resulting menus.
I think this would be OK normally, but since I had a ton of things to scan from my file cabinet, this got really boring, really fast to have to sit there and manually OCR every document over and over again. I knew there had to be a better way.
Applescript To The Rescue
I am a complete AppleScript newbie, but I found this great post from Macworld where the author made an AppleScript Folder Action that would watch a certain folder, and when a document got put in it, it would kick off Acrobat (or ReadIris Pro) and OCR it automatically.
I set ScanSnap Manager to save to a folder called ToProcess and gave that folder a Folder Action to run the MacWorld script.
This worked quite well, and would possibly work OK on an ongoing basis, but again I ran into problems when doing my massive scan-a-thon – if i dropped a document in to the folder while the other Acrobat session was still OCR’ing, it would give error messages.
Droplets Are Fun
The solution I came up with was to change the script so that it became a droplet. To do this I ripped off part of the script referenced in this thread.
A droplet is just an Application that you save somewhere (I have it on my Dock). You run it by dragging a file onto its icon.
Here is the script that I cobbled together . Feel free to download and use as you please.
Final Workflow
So now, I have the following workflow:
- Scan document using the ScanSnap, ScanSnap Manager saves the file in the ToProcess folder
- When I am done my batch, I drag the PDF files onto the OCRIt icon, which kicks of Adobe Acrobat Professional and tells it to recognize the text in the document
- When that is done, process/move the files as needed
It is working quite well for you, but I guess if I wanted to avoid all this I could have just stuck with DevonThink as it has built in OCR. What is your workflow? How do you handle the Optical Character Recognition part?
My ScanSnap Setup And Workflow – ScanSnap Settings
August 7, 2008
This is Part 1 of the My ScanSnap Setup And Workflow series. Make sure to check out Part 2 – ScanSnap Post-Scan Processing.
I recently moved and have taken the opportunity to do a massive scan-and-purge-a-thon. Almost every piece of paper from my filing cabinet, and every piece of paper that comes into the house gets fed to my trusty Fujitsu ScanSnap S300M and, if appropriate, shredded.
After 2060 sheets scanned so far, I’ve settled on a workflow and some settings, so I thought I would post it here. While they’re for my S300M they should apply for any model.
Profiles
I have four profiles set up in ScanSnap Manager. A profile is basically a collection of settings that you want to use, normally associated with the type of paper that you are scanning.
To create a new profile, go to ScanSnap Manager | Settings, click in the “Select A Profile” dropdown box, and choose Add Profile.
The four profiles I have set up are:
- Standard – Double sided pages, all in one PDF
- Stack Of Double – Double sided pages, one PDF per sheet
- Stack of Single – Single sided pages, one PDF per sheet
- Single All In One – Single sided pages, all in one PDF
Common Settings
There are some settings I have that are common to all 4 profiles:
Application Tab
I have all my profiles set to just scan to a file instead of an application. I will touch on that more in a bit.
Save Tab
The files get saved to a ToProcess folder with the standard filename.
Scanning Tab
To slightly increase the quality without compromising on speed too much, I have Image Quality set to “Better”, with Auto Color Detection.
In addition to the common settings, I have some settings set specifically for each profile
Standard Profile
On the Scanning tab, I have it set to Duplex Scan so that it scans both sides. On the File Option tab, I clicked the Option button and chose “Multipage PDF”. This puts everything in the batch in one PDF file instead of splitting it up.
I also have “Continue scanning after current scan is finished” checked. This is because sometimes I will have large stacks that I want put in one file, but the stack is larger than the ScanSnap 300M can take in one run. By checking this, it will wait and keep adding to the same file after each scan (until I hit Finished).
Stack Of Double Profile
The Stack of Double profile is handy when I have a stack of double sided pages, but i want each page in a separate file. It uses Duplex scanning like in the Standard Profile with two differences:
- I have “Continue scanning after current scan is finished” unchecked on the Scanning tab
- In File Options | Options, I have it set to Generate one PDF file per 2 pages.
Stack of Single Profile
The Stack of Single profile is the same as the Stack of Double, except I have Scanning Side set to Simplex (Single Sided) on the sca nning tab, and “Generate one PDF file per 1 page” set on the File Option | Options screen.
Single All In One Profile
The Single All In One profile has Simplex and “Continue Scanning” set on the Scanning tab and Multipage PDF set in File Options | Options.
Why bother with a Single All In One profile when the ScanSnap removes blank pages? The ScanSnap is great at removing blank pages, but sometimes documents have markings or heavy creases on the back, and the ScanSnap doesn’t pick those up as blanks. Having a Single All In One profile saves me from deleting pages later.
Next time I will cover using OCR software and document management software to actually do something with these newly minted PDFs.
Do you have any other profiles or workflows that you use? Let us know in the comments.
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