Coming up on two years ago (yikes) I did a post in which I had helped a DocumentSnap reader use his Fujitsu ScanSnap to scan into Microsoft OneNote 2007.
I know that OneNote is a popular program, but I had never actually used it myself other than a few minutes at Gnomedex 2005 when Robert Scoble was extolling its’ virtues on his tablet.
I decided to rectify that, so I downloaded a trial of Microsoft OneNote 2010 and decided to try setting it up with my ScanSnap S1300 and see how it works.
Creating A Notebook
OneNote uses the concept of Notebooks to store notes in. When you first install it there is a Personal notebook, but I decided to create a notebook called Documents.
This might not make sense for you- you might want your scanned documents to spread amongst other notebooks, but for simplicity I’ll put them all in one.
OneNote 2010 allows you to create a Web notebook that you can share. I won’t be doing that here but look into it if it is something interesting to you.
Setting Up Sections
Inside each Notebook, you can set up different sections for categorization purposes. In this example, I’m going to set up sections for Home, Tax, Kids, and Office. Set up whatever makes sense to you, of course.
Putting Stuff Into OneNote
When you click on the Insert menu item, you can see that there are a whole bunch of ways to get information into OneNote, whether by attaching files, recording audio or video, using a screen clipper, or by using a File Printout.
You can also drag a file in to the OneNote application itself.
Don’t Hit That Scanner Button
If you are using a ScanSnap, you might be tempted by the siren song of that Scanner Printout button.
Since the ScanSnap doesn’t support TWAIN, it’s not going to work in your case. What we need to do is set it up from the ScanSnap Manager side.
Setting Up ScanSnap Manager
When you install OneNote, it creates a special Printer Driver called Send To OneNote 2010 (this will vary based on your version of course). What we are going to do is create a ScanSnap Manager Profile to scan to that Printer.
To set this up:
- Right-click on the ScanSnap icon in your tray and choose Scan Button Settings
- Click on the Profile box and choose Add Profile. Call it something like Scan To OneNote
- On the Application tab, choose Scan To Print (click to embiggen)
- If you don’t want to keep a copy of the PDF in the directory specified on the Save tab, hit the Application Settings button
- Set the rest of your quality, duplexing, etc. options as desired.
Scan Away
Now when you hit the scan button using your ScanSnap, it will pop up the printer dialog box. Choose your Send To OneNote 2010 printer, and it will scan it right into OneNote.
You can then move the document into whichever Notebook/Section you want.
Once you do that, your note will be created (click image to embiggen).
What About OCR?
Good question. Luckily, OneNote will do the OCR for you.
I couldn’t possibly do a better job outlining this than this article at How-To Geek so head over there and check out all the ways that you can use OCR in Microsoft OneNote.
From my initial assessments, Microsoft OneNote 2010 seems like a pretty cool tool for managing both your documents and your information in general.
Having said that, I am not sure what it is like once you get into hardcore use. If you have thoughts or experiences one way or the other on OneNote, drop a comment below and let us know.
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Thanks for the post. One question from your direction "… when you hit the scan button using your ScanSnap, it will pop up the printer dialog box. Choose your Send To OneNote 2010 printer, and it will scan it right into OneNote."
Is there a way to bypass the printer selection step and just have it always automatically print to Send To OneNote 2010 printer?
Hi, good question. I believe so. On the Application tab of the profile there is an "Application Settings" button. If you hit that, it should have a checkbox for "Show Print Dialog" that you can uncheck.
I am assuming, but can't test right now, that that will print automatically to your default printer, which may or may not be what you want but at least the option is there.
Is it snap scan or scan snap?
Microsoft OneNote 2010 vs Adobe Acrobat that comes with SnapScan – are these the same thing. Why not use Adobe Acrobat if it comes with snapscan?
answer to [email protected] please
I'm trying to see how difficult searching and retrieving my information once I've scanned it in will be – how useful this scanner will be to me – no one seems to mention how to code the documents you scan in so that you can retrieve them later, which would seem the most important part to me – how to set up files or some sort of filing system – I'm lost at this point. Thanks for any help. Carol
Hi Carol,
It is ScanSnap (no spaces). OneNote and Acrobat are not really the same thing. OneNote is a program that allows you to organize a bunch of information, including (but not limited to) documents.
Acrobat is mainly a tool for editing and working with PDFs. It is not a document management program like OneNote (for example) is.