As far as cloud providers go, Box has carved a niche for itself as a service for business. 97% of the Fortune 500 use it, and from my experience even smaller businesses like bookkeepers, financial planners, and even individuals have started to flock to it.
Unfortunately, the Fujitsu ScanSnap does not have Box integration built in. There is software you can buy to connect the two, but it is easy to set up ScanSnap-to-Box scanning yourself for free using the tools that both companies provide. Here’s one way to do it.
Install Box Sync
Box provides a tool called Box Sync that will allow you to synchronize files between Box and your Mac or PC. This is what we will be using.
When you log in to Box, you will see a button on the right that says Install Box on your computer. Click that and download the software.
Warning: When you install it, any files you have in the “root” of your Box account (in other words, not in a folder) will be copied down to your computer. If you don’t want that, move those files to a folder first.
Once it is installed and you have logged in with your Box credentials, you will see the Box Sync screen.
Of course, it will look a bit different on Windows but the concept is the same.
Find Your Box Folder
Box Sync will create a folder on your computer, and that is where we will be scanning to.
When you go to the Settings tab, you will see your Box Sync folder listed. Make a note of that because we will need it later.
Decide Where Scans Will Go
If you want to just scan documents to the root of your Box account (in other words, not in a folder), you just need to make a note of the above folder and you can skip this step.
If you want your scans to go to a specific folder in your Box account, there is one additional thing you need to do.
In Box, find your folder (in my example it is called Box Inbox). Click the little downward triangle and choose Sync Folder To Computer.
Once you do that, your folder should appear on your computer inside that Box Sync folder you made note of earlier.
Set Up ScanSnap To Scan To Box
If you use the Quick Menu with your ScanSnap (that little window with icons that pops up after you scan), you can just scan a document, choose Scan To Folder, and choose your Box Sync folder that you made note of earlier.
If you use ScanSnap Manager, you can create a Profile that will send scans right to that folder without your involvement.
To do that, create a ScanSnap Manager profile (in my case I am being original and calling it Scan to Box). On the Applications tab, you can either choose Scan To Folder if you want it to pop up a window allowing you to name and save it, or if you want it to be more automated, choose None (Scan To File) and it won’t prompt you at all.
On the Save tab, choose the Box Sync folder that you made note of earlier, or the subfolder that you selected to sync to your computer.
Set up the rest of the ScanSnap Manager Profile however you’d like. If you need assistance setting up profiles, you can read the ScanSnap manual or may I humbly suggest my Unofficial ScanSnap Setup Guide.
Scan Away!
Once my profile was set up, I scanned to my Box Inbox folder that I had selected to sync. You can see the document here.
The document automatically appears in my Box.com account.
Here is it using Box’s very nice PDF viewer.
Once you have all this set up, scanning to Box with a ScanSnap is fast and easy. Do you have a different method to scan to Box? Let us know in the comments.
