Document preparation is something I have written about before, but probably not often enough.
What do I mean by document preparation? Taking a bit of time before you start scanning to organize your documents so that the scanning process goes much more smoothly.
Over on the AIIM Capture Expert Blog, Chris Riley (aka the “Imaging Savant”) has an excellent post titled Scanner rage!, and gives 5 tips how to avoid it.
Yes document preparation, in an age of technology, is the last thing we want to put effort into before scanning. After all why can’t the scanner remove staples for us! Document preparation is one of those things that if you don’t do it well, you will cause much more frustration and pain later. Worst case you scan poor quality images, and destroy your original document, in the best case you spot the issue but waste time with a re-scan. Even on scanners with an ADF as small as 30-sheets, if you run a paperless office like I do, you need to think about doc prep
Check out his post for the tips. I especially like the first one. I don’t know why I had never thought of ripping the pages off at the corner instead of messing around with a staple remover. Obviously there are some cases where you may not want to do this, but if you are going to be shredding the thing anyways, why not?
Do you have any other “pre-scan” document prep tips that you use? Let us know in the comments.
(Photo by Keees)
