Fujitsu ScanSnap and Microsoft OneNote

A reader (hi Matt!) wrote in because he was having trouble getting his ScanSnap S500 to work seamlessly with Microsoft OneNote 2007.

Previously what he had to do was scan to a folder, then go into OneNote and manually import the file in. Needless to say if you do this a lot, it gets to be a pain.

We eventually figured it out so I thought I would share it with you here. Here is the workflow:

OneNote 2007 (not sure about earlier versions) installs a printer driver called “Send to OneNote 2007” (as referenced here).
Go into ScanSnap Manager and create a profile with your desired settings, and for Application choose Scan To Print. Choose the Send To OneNote 2007 printer as your printer
Scan a page and ScanSnap Manager should send it straight into OneNote 2007

I Don’t Have Scan To Print!

There was one small snag with the plan that we came up with. Matt did not have the “Scan To Print” option in ScanSnap Manager.

His model of ScanSnap, the S500, is an older model and the version of ScanSnap Manager that shipped with it did not have the Scan To Print option.

We thought we were toast until we found that Fujitsu has released updated versions of ScanSnap Manager. The list of them for the different models is here: http://www.fujitsu.com/global/support/computing/peripheral/scanners/drivers/scansnap.html

The link for the S500 specifically is here: http://www.fujitsu.com/global/support/computing/peripheral/scanners/drivers/s500.html

After installing the new software, he was able to Scan to Print straight into OneNote.

Any Better Ideas?

This is the solution that we came up with. Do you have any other ways of using the ScanSnap to automatically scan into Microsoft OneNote? Let us know in the comments.

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About the Author

Brooks Duncan helps individuals and small businesses go paperless. He's been an accountant, a software developer, a manager in a very large corporation, and has run DocumentSnap since 2008. You can find Brooks on Twitter at @documentsnap or @brooksduncan. Thanks for stopping by.

Leave a Reply 4 comments

alleen - March 5, 2014 Reply

Asking questions are in fact good thing if you are not understanding
something completely, however this post gives nice understanding even.

@DarrellCatmull - December 8, 2012 Reply

I'm avoiding free, but not really free, cloud apps like evernote and shoeboxed in favor of onenote. Microsoft couldn't bring themselves to collaborate with Fujitsu to create a utility that would afford us to scan to Onenote in 1-step. But your article helped me realize that if I'm dedicating a block of time to scanning documents to onenote I can scan in one step. All I have to do is make the, send to onenote printer, my default printer and uncheck the "show print dialog" option in scansnaps application settings withing the application tab. Then when I'm done with a that scanning project and re-check the "show print dialog" box so that when I do one scan erroneously I am offered the option to send it to one note vs my default hardware printer.

MPIII - April 24, 2009 Reply

I am an avid user of OneNote and the S510 scanner. In some cases I want to scan a document and place into OneNote and the suggestion above addresses this. Many times I simply want to place into OneNote the path to the original file I have previously scanned with the ScanSnap scanner. Can you explain an easy way from the ScanSnap software to send a path/link to the original file into OneNote? Thanks.

Matt - September 13, 2008 Reply

Brooks, thanks for all your help. You are a genius! As Brooks explained to me, the reason that the ScanSnap scanner does not show up in OneNote as a device to select from using the normal steps in OneNote to insert a scanned image, i.e., Insert–> Pictures–> From Scanner or Camera, is that ScanSnap does not use TWAIN drivers. That’s why it doesn’t show up in the listed devices. Consequently, I have another multi-function printer/scanner that did show up in the devices listed which is why I was stumped when my ScanSnap was not listed as an option. Using the steps that Brooks has outlined in this post allowed me to scan directly into OneNote. The scanned item shows up as a new page under “Unfiled Notes”. You can read more about the ScanSnap’s lack of a TWAIN driver and how it might impact how your scanner will (or won’t) interact with other software you may have by clicking here: http://193.128.183.41/home/v3__product.asp?pid=517&inf=faq&xid=257