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The Fujitsu ScanSnap‘s Automatic Document Feeder is great for taking a stack of documents and ripping through it, but what do you do when the document you want to scan has more pages than the feeder can hold?

This is particularly an issue with the ScanSnap S1300, which can only hold 10 sheets at a time.

It turns out it’s not a huge problem at all. You just need to make one change to your ScanSnap Manager profile.

Right click on the ScanSnap icon in your Dock or System Tray and choose Settings (or Scan Button Settings on Windows).

Then go to the Scanning tab. You’ll see a checkbox that says Continue scanning after current scan is finished. Check that and hit Apply.

Now, when you stack of documents in the feeder and hit the scan button, after it finishes it will prompt you to add more pages. If you’re done the document, hit Finish Scanning. Otherwise, add more pages into the feeder and hit Continue Scanning.

If you scan a lot of large documents, it may be worth your while to create a special ScanSnap Manager profile just for this. Otherwise, you can just change the setting when you need it (or leave it checked all the time if you don’t mind the Finished Scanning box coming up every time).

(Photo: FeatheredTar)

Fujitsu has recently done a video that shows how you can use a highlighter (yes, a real physical highlighter) with a ScanSnap S1500 to choose which parts of a document you want to be searchable.

Basically, you go into ScanSnap Manager and check the setting “Set the marked text as a keyword in the PDF file”. Then when you scan it in, it will detect which parts of the documents are highlighted.

Unfortunately this only works on black & white documents, but still pretty cool.

A few of my posts have discussed how to disable the Quick Menu in ScanSnap Manager. Well, recently Fujitsu posted a good video on all the features of the Quick Menu and how to use it.

How do you roll? Quick Menu on or off? Sound off in the comments.

In the past I have posted about how to use Japanese ScanSnap drivers, and have posted that the new Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 and S1500M will be cross-platform, but what if you don’t want to mess around with foreign drivers or have an older ScanSnap scanner?

if you have access to a Windows XP CD, there is a free way that you can use your ScanSnap S510 or S300 on your Mac using VirtualBox. (This may even work with Linux too – I’ve never tried).

VirtualBox is a free open source program that will let you run Windows on your Mac. There’s no rebooting required like Boot Camp – you run Windows inside a window in your Mac. This is great not only for the ScanSnap but for any Windows program you may be stuck using.

There are two requirements to do this:

1. You need to have an Intel mac. No Powerbooks or Powermacs, sorry.
2. You need to have access to a Windows XP installation CD

Ready? Here’s how to do it:

1. Go to http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads and download VirtualBox for OSX hosts

2. Double-click on the downloaded VirtualBox .DMG file and open it up. Then double-click on the VirtualBox.mpkg installer

Follow through all the prompts and click Close when done.

3. In the Applications folder, double click on the VirtualBox application

4. Once VirtualBox starts up, click the New icon

5. Go through the steps of the Wizard. At first, give your new virtual machine a name (you can think of a virtual machine as your new Windows-inside-your-Mac). Give it as much memory as you want but don’t go below the recommendation. For this I stuck with the base 192 Megs but you may want to bump it up if you can.

6. If you are doing this for the first time, chose New for Hard Drive and when you go through the wizard you probably want to choose Dynamic Storage

7. You can leave the name of your new virtual disk as-is and give it whatever you think you need for hard drive space.

8. Hit Finish to end the new virtual disk creation wizard, then Next to choose your new disk, then Finish

9. You’ll now see that the Settings and Start menus are activated. Before we start, we want to enable USB. Click the Settings Icon and then the Ports menu. Click Enable USB Controller.

10. Click OK and then the Green Start arrow

11. You’re going to get a message about it auto-capturing your keyboard. All that is saying is that if you are “in Windows” and you do something like Alt-Tab, it will be doing the Alt-Tab in Windows and not in your Mac. If you don’t want that, just hold down the left Command key. Hit OK.

12. Now it’s time for the First Run Wizard. Pop in your Windows XP CD, choose where it is, and hit Next and Finish if it’s right.

13. Now we get the beautiful blue Windows install screens we know and love. Hit Enter to choose your new Unpartitioned Space and choose to format NTFS. Then let it run.

14. Create a Shared Folder so that your Mac can see documents that your Windows VM has scanned. Click the Shared Folders icon and then Add A Shared Folder.

15. Choose or create a folder and then click Make Permanent and hit OK

16. Before your new shared folder will work, in the top VirtualBox VM menu, choose Devices and then Install Guest Additions. Choose VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe and follow the prompts

17. Map that new folder to a drive letter, say in this example the Z drive. In Windows Explorer. go to My Network Places, Then Entire Network, then VirtualBox Shared Folders and you should see \\VBOXSVR\Scanned (or whatever you called your new folder). Right click on that and choose Map Network Drive and give it a drive letter.

18. Now it’s time to follow Fujitsu’s instructions for installing your Windows ScanSnap. Don’t plug in your ScanSnap yet but install the software on your Setup CD.

19. Plug in your ScanSnap and turn it on. You will likely find.. nothing happens. Your light on your ScanSnap may blink. You need to tell VirtualBox that you want to enable it first. Click on the Ports icon on the bottom of your VM and choose your scanner from the list of devices.

20. Scan away! Either scan to a folder or using ScanSnap Organizer. Either way, if you want your PDFs to be accessible by the Mac you will probably want to scan them to your drive that you created in step 17.

There we go. It’s really not as complex as this 20 step tutorial may make it sound, but if you give it a try let me know how it goes.

Update: It now looks like the ScanSnap S1500 and S1500M are now on Amazon!

As you may have seen, Fujitsu posted a press release yesterday saying that the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 (for PC) and ScanSnap S1500M (for Mac) are now released.

My main question was – will they be cross-platform like most USB devices? In this ScanSnap 1500M post, commenter rei said that he was told that they in fact would be.

I have just confirmed with Fujitsu that yes, rei is right. You will be able to plug the ScanSnap S1500M into a Windows machine and vice versa (as long as you install the correct software). This is tremendous! No more Windows to Mac (or vice versa) workarounds!

This feature alone makes the S1500 models a big improvement. Here are a few more details that Fujitsu shared with me:

• ScanSnap Manager comes in two flavors, the Windows version (ScanSnap Manager V5.0) and the Mac version (ScanSnap Manager V3.0)
• There is a Windows setup disk that comes with the S1500 and a Mac setup disk that comes with the S1500M, but each comes with both versions on the DVD (!)
• When the Setup Disk is installed, Setup detects PC or Mac and displays the appropriate installer for that platform.
• Aside from ScanSnap Manager, the Setup only contains the specific applications for the model detected.
• No, it doesn’t come with both the Windows and Mac versions of Acrobat. Acrobat comes on a separate CD.

If you go to the Fujitsu US store, you can actually see the S1500M there. However, it doesn’t appear to be on Amazon or other similar sites yet and I am told that if you do order it there, it will be back-ordered. Apparently it should start hitting stores around March 20. I’ll re-post when I see it available.

As mentioned, the biggest headache of previous ScanSnaps (and there weren’t many) was the fact that they were not cross-platform. This addresses that.

Recently I’ve been asked quite a bit how to use Evernote with the Fujitsu ScanSnap. It’s a great combination and quite easy. Here’s a video that runs you through the processs. The video shows the Mac version, but Windows will be the same concept.

In a nutshell, here is what you do. In this example I’ll be creating a new ScanSnap Manager Profile, but you can modify an existing one if you want.

• Right click on ScanSnap Manager and choose Settings. If the options are grayed out, disable Quick Menu for ScanSnap Manager
• On the Applications tab, hit Add Or Remove
• Hit Add, click Browse, and find your Evernote application. It will likely be in the Applications folder on the Mac, or C:\Program Files\Evernote on Windows
• Hit Close
• In the “Select A Profile” box, choose Add Profile and give it a name like “Scan To Evernote”
• On the Applications tab, choose Evernote for the Application. Hit Apply.
• Click on ScanSnap Manager and make sure that your new Profile is selected
• Scan and enjoy!

Does anyone else use the ScanSnap with Evernote? Do you do it any other way? Let us know in the comments.

So you’ve finally disabled Quick Menu and you’ve gotten all your ScanSnap Manager Profiles set up. Now you want to make sure that you don’t lose it all.

This will be a two part post, first starting with the Mac. Windows will come soon.

I won’t get too technical, but your settings are stored in something called a Property List file (plist). What you want to do is back up that file and keep it somewhere safe.

Here is where it is:

• In Finder go to your Home directory
• Click on Library
• Click on Preferences
• Scroll down and you will see a bunch of files that start with jp.co.pfu.blah blah blah. The one you want is called jp.co.pfu.ScanSnap. V10L10.plist (that V10L10 might be different for you. Not sure what that signifies exactly)

If you want to see what is in it and you are in Leopard, highlight it and hit the space bar. Quick Look will open up.

Back up that file and you should have your settings saved if disaster strikes. It might even be good for migrating your ScanSnap settings to another machine, though I have not tried that yet.

Let me know if this trick does end up helping some day.

One of the most efficient ways to use ScanSnap Manager is to set up different Profiles for different scanning scenarios.

For example, in my ScanSnap workflow series I talk about how I set up four different Profiles.

One problem that a lot of people run into (and I have received questions on), is what to do when you can’t get to the Profile options in ScanSnap Manager. What do you do when those options are grayed out?

It’s quite simple. Fujitsu decided to enable the Quick Menu by default, and that is what is messing you up. Here is what you do.

• Right click on the ScanSnap Manager icon in the system tray (Windows) or the dock (Mac)
• You will probably find that “Use Quick Menu” is checked.
• Click on that option to uncheck it, and then your profile settings should be enabled.

That should do it!