I’ve been interacting with Tim Haughton (@documentmanager) quite a bit on Twitter lately, and he let me know that one of the most requested features of Home Document Manager has now been implemented – it now works with the Fujitsu ScanSnap.
Uses A Watch Folder
Traditionally, Home Document Manager has worked with TWAIN scanners, which we all know the ScanSnap does not support. The way they did it is using a watch folder. You configure ScanSnap Manager to save the PDF to a folder, and then configure Home Document Manager to watch that folder. Whenever you scan something using the ScanSnap (or, of course, just save the file in that folder), Home Document Manager will import it. You can either use ScanSnap’s OCR or Home Document Manager’s.
HDM has a comprehensive blog post showing how it’s all done.
What Is Home Document Manager?
HDM is a Windows only document management solution. For a Windows program (sorry 
) it looks pretty good.
I installed it here and while the software requires .NET, which I did not have, the software installed it for me and I was good to go.
Home Document Manager has a number of functions:
- Import BMP, JPG, TIF, GIF, or PDF files
- Scan directly into Home Document Manager from a TWAIN scanner. If your scanner does not support TWAIN (such as a ScanSnap), scan to a watch folder to automatically import
- OCR them to make them into searchable PDFs. If importing a PDF that is not already searchable, it will OCR it to make it searchable
- Sort and manage your documents in a folder structure of your choosing
- Search within PDFs to find what you’re looking for
- Choose where you want the imported files to be stored
You have a choice of whether you want to delete the source file that you are importing. If you choose to do that, make sure you have a backup of the folder where your HDM information is stored in case something ever becomes corrupted.
All in all, if you are a Windows user, I recommend checking out Home Document Manager. It’s $49 but there is a 60 day/50 document trial so you can see how it works out for you.
Need Some Help Going Paperless?
How about three ways to help unclutter and de-stress by turning piles of paper into an organized electronic system?
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