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Did you know that you can automate Evernote for Windows via the Command Prompt?

Neither did I until recently. It turns out that Mac users with their fancy AppleScripts don’t get to have all the fun.

Check out the Windows command line page on the Evernote Developers mini-site.

You can see that there are two Evernote EXEs that you can use to automate: Evernote.exe and ENScript.exe.

Using these, you can automate things like:

• Note creation
• Screenshots
• Clipboard pasting
• Database syncing
• Note import
• Note printing
• Note exporting
• Notebook creation

The developer instructions show you how to programatically find the location of these magic EXEs, but for the non-programmers out there, check C:\Program Files\Evernote\Evernote or C:\Program Files (x86)\Evernote\Evernote depending on your version of Windows.

I was inspired by this Evernote forum post to try to automate notebook exporting.

Start Up Command Prompt

First, start up the Command Prompt window. Yes, we’re going back to DOS.

You can find this by clicking on the Start button and typing Command in the Search box and then choosing Command Prompt from the results.

You’ll get a blank command prompt window, and some of you will be breaking out in a cold sweat about now.

Figure Out Your Command

From the Evernote page, it looks like we want to be using ENScript.exe, and will need to figure out a few parameters.

Since we want to export our notes, we will need the exportNotes command, and we will need two options:

• /q query: The Evernote search query. In this case, I want to export a specific Evernote notebook called Recipes. So, I will need to use the Evernote search query notebook:Recipes.
• /f filename: The name of the file that I want to save. In this case, I’ll just call it test.enex.

Put it All Together

Back to the Command Prompt, here is my full command:

"\Program Files (x86)"\Evernote\Evernote\ENScript exportNotes /q notebook:Recipes /f test.enex

Obviously the location of your EnScript.exe, your command, and your options will differ based on what you are trying to do.

Unfortunately there is no visual feedback. It just pauses for a while and you go back to the command line.

If you go to the location that you are saving the file, you can see the ENEX is there.

What Do You Want To Do?

If you want to automate an Evernote activity on Windows, chances are the command line switches might let you do it. For example, you could probably take this export code and put it in Task Scheduler and have it export on a regular basis.[1]

You could also scan and have it automatically create, tag and title documents.

With some imagination, this is a powerful and pretty unknown feature of Evernote, albeit a geeky one.

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Here are some of our posts from this week in years past.

2011

• How I Do Offsite Backup To A Friend’s Computer Using CrashPlan
  I still do this. Haven’t had to restore from it, thankfully. It is very handy to have an automatic, offsite, but local backup.

• Dropbox Security And Going Paperless
  A year ago this week, Dropbox had a bit of an issue when they changed their terms of service. It is funny to see Google Drive going through something slightly similar.

2010

• Why Is ScanSnap Organizer’s Search Box Greyed Out?
  This is probably less of a problem now with more people on Windows 7, which has built-in Windows Search.

(Photo by Ayleen Gaspar)

A few months ago, Ernest Svenson from PDF For Lawyers wrote a very interesting piece: When should you OCR documents? A quick primer.

His premise is that you should be very selective about the documents that you make searchable by applying Optical Character Recognition.

Many people know that OCR stands for ‘optical character recognition,’ or if they don’t know that then they know that OCR is what you do to a scanned document to make it text-searchable. When you buy a new scanner like the Fujitsu ScanSnap it’ll come with OCR software, and most people get the idea that they should OCR all documents that they scan. I don’t recommend this, and don’t know many “paperless experts” who recommend it.

He makes an interesting case that performing OCR takes too long, takes more space, and most of the time we don’t need to search for the stuff that we scan anyways, so while waste the time?

I have to admit, I take a different approach. I do tend to OCR almost everything. I have a few reasons why:

• I tend to “pre-organize” my documents so that I can scan like types together. This way, I don’t usually have the problem of having to wait for the OCR to finish before scanning the next document. I just put the stack in and hit go.
• I don’t personally find that it takes all that long to OCR.
• Storage is getting cheaper and cheaper, and if my PDFs are a little larger, that is not something I personally worry about too much.
• I find that you never know what you will need to find until you need to find it. I prefer to err on the side of making documents more findable and not less.
• The biggest reason is: I don’t like having to make decisions about this sort of stuff. Every time you need to make a decision about doing your scanning is one more opportunity for things to fall off the rails. I prefer to “set it and forget it”.

As Ernest points out, some of this can be mitigated by doing batch OCR in ABBYY FineReader or in Acrobat.

I am not a lawyer, so it could be that the paper volume and time associated with a legal office makes selective OCR more important. Having OCR mostly on works well for me, but each situation is of course different.

How about you, do you pick and choose what you OCR?

(Photo by orangeacid)

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Making your PDF documents searchable is great, but sometimes it can slow things down. One way to speed things up is to scan first and then OCR afterwards. This is referred to as “batch OCR”.

If you have a ScanSnap and a Mac, you can do this using the ABBYY FineReader software that comes with your scanner, and this video shows you how.

Note that this workflow comes from this comment by awesome DocumentSnap reader Telegard, so thanks to him or her for the suggestion.

View the video below, or click here to watch it on YouTube. If you are able to, I recommend that you watch it with HD turned on.

This video on doing batch OCR after scanning is part of a series of quick videos on paperless tips and topics. View more in the series here.

(Photo by Rachel from Cupcakes Take the Cake)

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As I mentioned in my MacSparky home screen interview, I have had an elusive quest to be able to save e-mails to PDF on the iPhone or iPad.

I was almost there with Save2PDF, but iOS5 killed that. So far, I have settled on a workflow using an app called Printopia that works very well. Before I get into the application, there are some things I need to get out of the way:

1. The application is $19.95, so this needs to be something you really want to do.
2. It is Mac only.
3. It only works on your local network. This is not ideal, but not too bad for me as I am a hermit that lives in my dungeon office.

Isn’t Printopia For Printing?

Yes, yes it is. I suspect that the main reason that people buy Printopia is so that they can print from their iPhone or iPad to any printer, not just AirPrint devices.

That’s why most people buy it, but DocumentSnap readers are not most people. We don’t care about printing.[1] What we care about is the ability to have Printopia save to PDF in any folder.

Set Up Printopia

When you install Printopia, it automatically detects your printers and displays them, along with some new entries, in the Printopia System Preference pane.

You can see that it has detected my laser printer and added two new options: Send to Dropbox on Mac and Send to Mac. Those are default settings that allow you to save to a Printopia folder in Dropbox or in your Documents folder. Just for fun, we won’t use those and will create our own.

If you ever need to get back to these settings, it shows up under Other in your System Preference pane.

Add A New Location

You can save to any folder on your Mac, or any Application. You can even save to an Automator PDF workflow (!). We won’t be too hardcore here, and will just save it to an Inbox folder on the Mac.

Click the plus sign, and you are given the option to create a new location. We will choose Save to Folder on Mac….

As far as I can tell, Save to Folder on Mac… and Save to Folder on Dropbox… don’t do anything differently. It is just that by default the Dropbox one will be under the Dropbox folder, and by default the Mac one will be under Documents. You can set either where you want.

I chose an Inbox folder under Documents, and you can see that I now have a new entry in my Printopia pane.

Let’s create a Dropbox one too.

Stop Auto-Open

By default, when you create a PDF with Printopia, it will automatically open up the PDF after it is created. I personally don’t like that. I just want it to create the file and get out of my way.

To turn that behavior off, double click on the location in the Printopia pane and then un-check Open Sent Files Automatically. Much better.

Saving A PDF From iOS

When you are in an app that supports it[2], tap on the Print button. In iOS Mail, first tap the “swoop”.

Then hit the Print button.

Then you will see the entries that we had set up in the Printopia pane. (Yeah!)

We can either print the file (no!) or save it to one of our locations. I’ll save it to Filed Documents on Dropbox.

This screenshot was taken on my MacBook Air, which is not the Mac Mini that I have Printopia installed on.

Since I had saved the file to a Dropbox folder, it automatically appeared on my other computer. The file name is the subject line of the email, which I can now change. You can probably see how powerful this can be.

All in all, I have found Printopia to be really easy to use and reliable. I am currently on the seven day free trial, but I will likely be purchasing it.

Do you have a different way to save PDFs from iOS (in particular, save e-mails as PDF)? Please let us know in the comments.

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Here are some of our posts from this week in years past.

2011

• Reader Story: Automating Document Processing
  Great reader story by Tom Cook.

• Papers Of The US War Department
  The AP department was giving George Washington grief about his expense claim, too.

2010

• Creditbloggers Compares Shoeboxed With The ScanSnap
  Comparing using Shoeboxed and the ScanSnap S1500.

• Reader Question: What software do you use for Business Cards?
  Any updates to the suggestions in the commnents?

• Scan To Google Docs With ScanDrop
  There is now a free Mac version and a more fully featured Mac version. Also, now the Fujitsu ScanSnap will scan directly to Google Docs.

(Photo by Ayleen Gaspar)

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A question I get asked all the time is “what is the best way to organize Evernote?”

If you’ve been reading my stuff for any length of time, you’ll know that there is no such thing as a “best way”, but it can be helpful to see how others do it.

I came across this great post by Christopher Mayo at Princeton University where he outlines how he organizes Evernote for his study and research.

Below I have an overview of my Evernote account and comments on how I use it, followed by some thoughts about why I have set things up this way. Basically, no matter how satisfyingly systematic an organizational scheme like 43 folders might be, my recommendation is to just name everything well and avoid wasting time with multiple folder destinations.

He takes an interesting approach: having everything in one place, using consistent naming (this is key!) and, of course, going paperless.[1]

It is a great read. Do you think any tips for how you organize Evernote? I’d love to hear them in the comments.

(Photo by othree)

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When you receive a PDF attachment via email, or view a PDF on the web, what do you do with it?

This video shows how you can open and work with almost any type of file with any supporting app on the iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch.

View the video below, or click here to watch it on YouTube. If you are able to, I recommend that you watch it with HD turned on.

This video on working with PDF attachments on iOS is part of a series of quick videos on paperless tips and topics. View more in the series here.

(Photo by blakespot)

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Last year, in the Evernote LinkedIn group, I noticed that there was a very enthusiastic and helpful contributor. Whenever someone had a question, he would jump in and share his experience or provide suggestions.

His name is Daniel Gold, and when I found out that he was releasing an eBook last fall, I dropped the $5 right away and bought Evernote: The Unofficial Guide To Capturing Everything And Getting Things Done.

I reviewed Daniel’s eBook, and found it quite good and picked up some helpful tips.[1]

When Daniel told me that he was releasing a new eBook and asked me if I’d like to take a look, I said absolutely.

That new eBook is Springpad. Smarter Notebooks. Smarter Sharing. A Smarter Way to Get Things Done, and it is also $5.

What Is Springpad?

My approach coming in to this book is much different than Daniel’s previous book. I was a heavy Evernote user, so I was just looking for a tip or two.

With Springpad, I knew absolutely nothing about it. I decided to hold off until the company released its new version, at which point I would use Daniel’s eBook as my sole way to learn how to use it. I’m happy to say, it delivered.

My understanding is that Springpad used to be more of a direct Evernote competitor, but now with its recently-released new version, it is more like an Evernote-Pinterest hybrid.

Great, Now What About The Book?

For starters, the look is great. It has a nice clean interface, and a helpful (and pretty) table of contents so that you can jump right to the topic that you are interested in. Between you and me, I will probably be ripping that off in my future projects. Don’t tell Daniel.

The introduction starts right away with some ways that you might use SpringPad. As someone who wasn’t familiar with it, this is helpful.

He also frames right away how Springpad is different from other services:

With Springpad, it’s not just about adding notes to an online database. It’s not just your digital filing cabinet. It’s not just springing pretty pictures of things you’ve found online. It’s much more. It’s about sharing with people you trust to get more done. It’s about taking the mundane, daily activities and getting everyone (from just one person, to a group of friends, to the world) involved in your plans.

Getting Started

The Getting Started section takes through some of the settings that should be set, and right away points to how you can create a Backup. I appreciated that, because many people rarely consider backing up stuff on their computer, let alone information stored in a web service.

It is great that Springpad makes this so easy, and I am glad Daniel emphasized that right away.

Use Cases

Most of the instruction in the book is done in the form of use cases. Instead of a dry “this is what this setting does and here is how it works”, it is done by examples. “Let’s say you found a killer blueberry pancake recipe. Here’s what you’d do with it step-by-step…”. The examples definitely make it more interesting and relevant.

There are also other examples like trip planning, event planning, using Springpad on the go, and a bunch more. Even if you don’t plan to use the software for any of these specific things, if you keep an open mind you will be able to pick up tips for how to apply it to your own workflow.

I am quite possibly the worst cook this side of the Rocky Mountains, but I can more-or-less follow a recipe. His recipe examples look pretty awesome. I can see how using Springpad for this could be great.

Collaboration

Many of Daniel’s examples and use cases show how Springpad can be used for collaboration. It looks like the company put a lot of time and thought into this, and the eBook does a good job showing how you can use it to get stuff done with others.

GTD

Speaking of getting stuff done, the latter part of the book talks about Getting Things Done and how you can do it using Springpad. I don’t personally use it for that, but if you were a Springpad user, I can see how you could.

Any Suggestions For Improvement?

The only suggestion I would have for future versions is to talk a bit more about the sign-up process.

For example, SpringPad suggests that you follow some notebooks, so the Guide could talk about what that will do and what the implications are. Also, it prompts you to create some notebooks during signup. Should I do that now, or wait?

It wouldn’t be a bad idea to drop a section in about the sign-up process, unless I totally missed it.

Should You Get It?

As I said, I deliberately knew nothing about Springpad before reading Springpad. Smarter Notebooks. Smarter Sharing. A Smarter Way to Get Things Done, and after going through it I felt that I had a solid handle on how to use it and how Springpad might work for me.

If you see yourself using Springpad for more than just clipping images, I personally think that for only $5, it is a worthwhile jumpstart.

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Here are some of our posts from this week in years past.

2011

• Introducing the Paperless Document Organization Guide
  Wow, I didn’t realize that it has been a year since the release of the Paperless Document Organization Guide! Thanks to everyone who has purchased it so far.

• Sharing Links To Files In Dropbox Outside Of The Public Folder
  If you want to share a file in your Dropbox with others, here are some ways to do it.

2010

• Does The Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 OCR Use A Lot Of CPU?
  I had some questions about the ScanSnap’s CPU usage, so I made a little video.

• If You Want To Get Doxie, Now’s Your Chance
  The original Doxie has been shipping for two years now. It and the Doxie Go are great little scanners.

(Photo by Ayleen Gaspar)