Tips To Learn How To Go Paperless | DocumentSnap Paperless Blog

If you have a Fujitsu ScanSnap and are thinking of upgrading to Mac OSX Lion (10.7) which is due sometime in July, you will want to take steps to prepare yourself.

The good news is that it appears that Fujitsu is on top of it (you may remember the ScanSnap Snow Leopard fun from last time).

If you have a newer ScanSnap, you are in luck. A Lion update is already available.  Older models will have to wait until August.

To check the status, here is a link to a global compatibility site.

ScanSnap S1500, S1500M, S1300, S1100

If you have one of these newer models, you can do an online update to upgrade your ScanSnap Manager to V3.2L20.

There are instructions here but basically, you do this:

• Make sure ScanSnap Manager is running
• Go to Help > Online Update
• Follow the instructions

If for whatever reason you want to manually download the drivers, you can do so here.

ScanSnap S510M, S300M

Drivers are not available yet, but Fujitsu says they’ll be ready in the beginning of August

Update: Fujitsu has released the Lion drivers for the ScanSnap S300M, S510M, S500M, fi-5110EOXM. You can download them here.

CardIris

If you use the business card software that comes with the ScanSnap, it will not work in Lion. It will apparently be ready by the end of August.

Update 9/19/2011: Fujitsu has released an update for CardIris. You can download it here.

Adobe Acrobat

I haven’t been able to find anything that confirms that Adobe Acrobat 8 is incompatible with Lion. Here is what Fujitsu says this on the Lion page:

Adobe Acrobat
Please refer to the Adobe Systems website regarding the compatibility status of the Adobe Acrobat bundled with ScanSnap S1500 for Mac OS X v10.7 (Lion). For information related to purchasing Adobe® Acrobat® X Pro, please refer to Adobe Acrobat at the following website.

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatpro/buying-guide.displayTab3.html

The fact that they are pointing people to pay to upgrade to Acrobat X is probably not a good sign. I can see some people getting upset about this one.

I’ll update this post as more information becomes available.  If you have tried the ScanSnap on Lion, let us know how it is going (if that doesn’t break your NDA).

This month in 2001 I became engaged to my wife, which was great for me but possibly not such a smart move for her.

Another event that is almost as significant to the world is that in 2001, Fujitsu (or more specifically their subsidiary PFU) released the first ScanSnap, the fi-4110EOX.

Since 2001, the ScanSnap has gone through a huge number of changes, as this awesome infographic shows:

You can see the transition from the original ScanSnap up through the newest currently available models, the ScanSnap S1500, S1500M, S1300, S1100, and their network scanner that I haven’t written about before, the ScanSnap N1800.

To celebrate the ScanSnap’s 10th Anniversary, Fujitsu is giving away a ScanSnap S1100. You can read how to enter and the terms on Fujitsu’s site. Unfortunately, it seems to be open to USA residents only.

Good luck if you’re entering, and happy birthday to the folks at Fujitsu.

(Photos by leis bell, Fujitsu)

Hi there,

Readers of the DocumentSnap newsletter will know that I have been putting together a new offering for Fujitsu ScanSnap owners. I’m happy to announce that it is now ready to go.

The Unofficial ScanSnap Setup Guide helps answer the question “how the heck do I use my awesome ScanSnap scanner in the most efficient way?”

Learn more or pick it up here.

What It Is

Good question. The Guide is a 55+ page PDF with tips and strategies to help both Mac and Windows users figure out how to set up and use the software and functionality that is included with the Fujitsu ScanSnap. It is not a replacement for the very comprehensive manual that comes with the scanner, but more a brain dump of what I know about the software that comes with the ScanSnap, how I recommend you set it up, and some paper workflows that work really well for me.

Who It’s For

You are a new ScanSnap owner, or have had the scanner for a while but haven’t done much in the way of customization. You are possibly tired of looking all over the Internet for bits and pieces of information and would like to just have everything consolidated in one place.

What is all the software that comes with the ScanSnap for? When do you use it? What is the best way to set up ScanSnap Profiles? How do you speed up OCR by doing it after scanning? These are the kinds of questions that we look at.

Who It’s Not For

If you are an extremely experienced ScanSnap owner, this might not be for you (though for the price, who knows, maybe you’ll pick up a tip or two). Obviously if you use a different scanner than the Fujitsu ScanSnap, this guide won’t be terribly useful to you.

No guide or piece of software is going to “go paperless” for you. At the end of the day, you have to actually do the stuff outlined. If you are not at the place to be able to do that yet, this may not be for you.

That’s it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed putting it together for you.

Here’s the link again if you are interested.

Thanks!

I don’t know about you, but when I look at a table I always think that it is missing two things: a screen, and a scanner.

After all, I’m the one that is always saying that if you have trouble finding time to scan your documents, you should combine it with other activities.

Fortunately, the fine folks at Pioneer have addressed both of these needs by making the WWS-DT101 “Discussion Table”.

If you’ve ever seen one of those Microsoft Surface tables, you know what I am talking about. The table’s surface has a 52″ HD TV, and it is completely multitouch. You can do everything Minority Report-y like view images and documents, watch movies, move everything around with your fingers, pinch and zoom the whole deal.

The table has a built-in (OK, tacked-on) Fujitsu ScanSnap S1100, so you can scan a document and it will appear on the table, where you can view, annotate, and otherwise play around with it.

It also does a bunch of other cool things like sharing data wirelessly with your devices and other things from that cool Corning video.

It’s being released in Japan in late July and while the price hasn’t been announced, I believe it will be in the range of “a lot”.

If you want to see it in action, here is a three minute video. The scanning part is near the end.

(via Akihabara News)

If you have a Fujitsu ScanSnap, you may have gone into ScanSnap Manager to adjust the settings of your scanning profile. When you did, you likely saw the Compression tab and a) wondered what it did, and b) didn’t touch it.

To that end, I’m going to play around with it so that you don’t have to.

What Does The Help Say?

To start with, what does the ScanSnap Manager Help say about the Compression tab?

In the [Compression] tab of the ScanSnap setup window, you can specify the compression rate for the scanned images.

Well, we could have guessed that. What does it mean? Basically, it means you can save space by reducing the quality of the image, which therefore makes the file smaller. As the help goes on to say:

Note that noise in the image becomes more noticeable as you increase the compression rate, and vice versa.

Default

On the compression tab, you’ll se a slider and number. By default, the slider is set to the middle with a number 3.

It is slightly confusing, but basically the more you slide the slider to the right, the higher the number. The higher the number, the more compression is used, therefore the smaller the file, and therefore the lower the quality.

The Test

I want to see what impact the compression setting has, so I am going to do a little test. I have two documents:

• A black & white document
• A color magazine ad

I am going to scan these documents with the default, maximum, and minimum compression with the following scan settings:

• Quality set to 300dpi
• OCR set to off
• Color set to Automatic
• Scanner is a ScanSnap S1300

Default Settings

• B&W Document: File size: 328 KB. Quality: Good ((I recognize that Great is subjective, but I don’t know how to quantify it. Assume the default of Great is the baseline))
• Color Document: File size: 717 KB. Quality: Good

Minimum Compression

• B&W Document: File size: 319 KB. Quality: The Same
• Color Document: File size: 2.2 MB. Quality: Slightly better

Maximum Compression

• B&W Document: File size: 311 KB. Quality: The Same
• Color Document: File size: 315 KB. Quality: Not Too Different

The Results

As you can see, for a black and white document with Color set to Automatic, there is not much in the way of file size changes one way or the other.

However, there are wide swings in file size with the color magazine article. From 315KB all the way up to 2.2 MB.

To my laser-surgeryed eyes, I don’t see much of a change in quality between the three color documents, but since quality is so subjective, I have zipped up the PDFs for you to download if you so choose. You can download them here.

If you scan a lot of color documents and space is your concern, try bumping up the compression settings and see how the results turn out for you.

(Photo by Derrick Coetzee)

Quite unintentionally, this has become a week of updates. Last summer I posted a question asking if anyone has had any luck using a Belkin F5L009 Network USB Hub with their Fujitsu ScanSnap.

There was also a similar thread on Amazon.

I never did get a chance to try it out as my network scanning needs have diminished somewhat, but helpful DocumentSnap reader Yellowshock posted a comment on the original post that I thought I would highlight:

Maybe this post is stale but YES, you can use the F5L009 with the ScanSnap S1500(M) and there are no problems. There is a slight loss of speed, but hardly noticeable.
I use the Belkin F5L009 on a iMac 27″ with Mac OSX 10.6 snow leopard and a Fujitsu Scansnap S1500M.
I also have a Epson Photo flatbed scanner connected, the 1660 photo. Also flawless.

There is a similar response in the Amazon thread.

So, it looks like yes it does work. Does anyone else network their ScanSnap using this or another method? Let us know in the comments in case someone else is looking to do it too.

This is a guest post from Michelle Muto, author of the newly released book The Book of Lost Souls.

I’ve slowly been going paperless for about two years. It was part of my new mantra, “Everything you must have owns you.” I cleaned out closets, rooms, cabinets. I saved the worst for last – the dreaded filing cabinets. We had three of them – one a huge desk-length two-drawer behemoth large enough to hide bodies in.

After a couple of weeks in purging paperwork purgatory, I vowed to find a better way. A quick search online told me others were scanning documents. Great idea! Being a die-hard geek, it sounded like fun. Yeah, well, what can I say, right? Except it wasn’t fun. Not until I got my newFujitsu Scansnap S1300 for Christmas.

Now, I actually enjoy it. Yes, I know – I really should get out more.

Anyway, here’s my workflow:

I have a portable file folder where I store all incoming items in appropriate folders. Once a week I scan whatever is in the To Be Scanned folder. I use TextExpander to name things. !wtr becomes Gwinnett Water bill (ironically, the county that wants us to conserve water hasn’t yet embraced conserving trees).

I use TextExpander snippets for the date, too. !ymd becomes 2011-03-09. For monthly bills, I just use year and month since I don’t really care about the actual date. So, !ym !wtr expands to 2011-03 Gwinnett Water Bill.

Then I save the file and let Hazel do the rest.

Remember I said I vowed never to deal with paper again? Well, most of that is because I had to sit for hours to wade through records retention, trying to figure out what stayed and what I could shred.

In my Hazel rule above, notice that I keep files in folders based on groups. Utilities – Phone (cell), Utilities – Water, Insurance – Home, and so on. Yes, OCR helps, but sometimes I can just find things faster in a folder. My digital cabinet is a copy of my physical one. Plus, I use the folders to my advantage for records retention. And once again, Hazel has my back.

Let’s take the water bill. In my state, I really only have to keep it until the next bill arrives. But, I like to keep them for a year. So, I made a Hazel rule that runs on the folder Utilities – Water.

Each parent folder has such a subfolder. And, you’ll notice that I don’t actually delete the file. I just move it. I know I should just let it go and have Hazel delete the file, but I suppose that in a way, my OCD about filing trumps my mantra and still owns me.

Maybe in time. Which, speaking of, going paperless with the help of Brooks, Hazel, and TextExpander gives me more time to do what I love most. Write.

I’m an author, and while I still love holding a book in my hands, I also read more and more ebooks these days. My debut novel, The Book of Lost Souls, is now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble for just $1.99 – just in time for Read an Ebook Week. It’s a young-adult fantasy novel.
The sixty second pitch?
It’s not easy being a teen witch. Just ask Ivy MacTavish. Her date for the big dance is really a lizard, a black magic spell book is missing, and a charming demon is offering to help make things right—for a price.

Based on emails I am getting and searches that I can see in the DocumentSnap logs, this question is gaining a bit of steam: “For portable scanners, what is the difference between the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 and the ScanSnap S1100?”, and then of course: “Which should I buy?”.

Since one of the most popular posts on DocumentSnap is the ScanSnap S1100 vs. S1300 comparison, I thought it would be a good time to do a similar thing for the S1300 and S1100.

By the way, if you are comparing them, I have done both a ScanSnap S1300 review and a ScanSnap S1100 review in the past, so it may be worth your while to read those too.

Speed

• S1100: Up to 8 pages per minute, single sided
• S1300: Up to 8 pages per minute, double sided

While both models are nominally 8 pages per minute (or as Fujitsu says for the S1100, 7.5 seconds per page), the S1300 has a big advantage because it is double sided. It would take the S1100 15 seconds to scan a double-sided sheet whereas the S1300 can do it in 7.5.

Capacity

• S1100: 1 sheet
• S1300: Maximum 10 sheets

Clearly the S1300 is the winner here since it can hold ten sheets of paper at a time, whereas the S1100 does not have a document feeder.

Size/Weight

• S1100: 10.74 in. x 1.87 in. x1.33 in. (273mm x 47.5mm x 34mm). .77 lb (350 g).
• S1300: 11.18 in. x 3.90 in. x 3.03 in. (284mm x 99mm x 77mm). 3.08 lb. (1.4kg).

If size and weight are a concern, the S1100 is a clear winner. It is both much smaller and much lighter than the S1300 (especially when you consider the power adapter described in the next section).

Power

• S1100: Powered by a single USB cable, which also acts as the interface to the computer. It does not use an AC adaptor
• S1300: Powered by an AC adaptor, or can be powered by a separate USB cable (meaning it needs two USB ports if you do not use AC)

There isn’t a winner here per se, but the S1100 is much more simple to connect; one USB port and that is it.

Operating System

Fujitsu calls both the S1300 and the S1100 “hybrid scanners”. They are designed to be used both on Windows and the Mac, and come with all the software for both.

Included Software

The ScanSnap S1100 includes the following software:

• ScanSnap Organizer (Windows only)
• CardMinder 4.1 (Windows only)
• ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap (Windows and Mac)
• CardIris 3.6 (Mac only)
• Evernote
• ScanSnap Manager with the ability to scan to Evernote and Google Docs

The ScanSnap S1300 includes the following software:

• ScanSnap Organizer (Windows only)
• CardMinder 4.1 (Windows only)
• ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap (Windows and Mac)
• CardIris 3.6 (Mac only)
• Update 1/25/2012: Fujitsu has released a software update that allows the S1300 to scan directly to Evernote and Google Docs.

Neither the S1300 or the S1100 come with Adobe Acrobat like their big cousins the ScanSnap S1500 and ScanSnap S1500M.

So Which Is Better?

I bet you know what I am going to say here: It depends!

If you have a medium-large and/or regular volume of paper, I strongly urge you to go for the ScanSnap S1300. The extra speed and paper capacity will save you lots of time.

If you have a need to be mobile, or if you do only a small amount of scanning, you can probably get away with the ScanSnap S1100.

If you have a large volume of paper, you will probably be better off with the ScanSnap S1500 or ScanSnap S1500M.

Some time ago, I posted an article about how to use NeatWorks for Mac with the Fujitsu ScanSnap. In case you don’t know, NeatWorks is the software that comes with the NeatDesk and NeatReceipts scanner. Neatco sells the Mac version separately (though not the Windows version for some strange reason).

At the time, I was using a ScanSnap S300M and the latest desktop scanner was the S510M. Since then, I have had a lot of people ask if NeatWorks will work with newer ScanSnaps such as the ScanSnap S1500, the ScanSnap S1300, or the ScanSnap S1100.

The strange thing is, apparently if you ask, Neat is telling people that only the S510M and S300M are officially supported and newer ScanSnaps probably won’t work.

That sounded wacky to me, so I decided to try it out using the exact same profile that I had created back in that original post.

First I tried scanning to NeatWorks with my S1300:

Then I tried with a S1100:

In both cases the scanning appears to have worked fine.

Keep in mind that it seems to be Neat’s official position that it won’t work, so you are probably not going to get any help from them doing this, so caveat emptor.

Anyone run into any problems using NeatWorks with their newer ScanSnap?

Back in January, DocumentSnap reader Jos van de Voort van de Kleij wrote in with a question: How could he use his ScanSnap S1300 to scan directly to his OmniFocus inbox?

Now, despite the writing and podcasting of David Sparks, Ben Brooks, and Merlin Mann, I have not yet taken the plunge and started using OmniFocus. However, I was at Macworld at the time, so I went to the Omni booth to ask for suggestions, and they pointed me to the Omni Forums.

After some great help from the Omni folks, Jos has worked out a workflow that lets him scan to his OmniFocus Inbox. Now, why would he want to do this? Here are his words:

Remember: this workflow allows you to create paperless “ticklers” in OmniFocus therefore eliminating the need for the 43 folders as described in the book by David Allen. As an example you could scan a bill, give it a “pay by” date and it will disappear from your radar until the date comes to pay the bill. You will have the scan of the bill to support preparing the payment. When done you click the action completed and it goes away automatically. Yet another step in going paperless!

Sounds good to me. Here are the steps to get it done.

Set Up The A Folder Action

• Download the OmniFocus Applescript to somewhere on your computer
• Unzip it
• Drop the script into this folder:Macintosh HD>Library>Scripts>Folder Action Scripts
• Find or create a folder that you are going to want to scan/save to
• Right-click on this folder, and select Services>Folder Actions Setup

• Select the “Add files as OmniFocus actions” script

• Click Attach

Now you have a folder where any time a file gets saved there, it automatically gets imported to OmniFocus.

Set Up Your Scanner

Set up your scanner to scan to this folder (in my case I called it “To OmniFocus”).

If you are using a ScanSnap, you can set up a profile for this.

On the Application tab, choose Scan To File (or, if you want to be able to rename it first, Scan To Folder)

On the Save tab, browse to your OmniFocus scan folder that you created earlier.

For the rest of the tabs, set whichever options you prefer.

Scan To OmniFocus!

Once this is all set up, you are good to go. Select your OmniFocus profile, hit Scan, and the Quick Entry window should pop up.

Do whatever you OmniFocus people do there, and hit Save. The task will then be created with your scanned document as an attachment in your OmniFocus Inbox.

Since we’re talking OmniFocus, any other OF devotees out there that have tips or tricks for how they reference their documents from it? Let us know in the comments.