Tips for Going Paperless

[Dave Andrade 113]

I have been 100% paperless for a few years now, and was 90% paperless for years before that (usually due to others, not me). Evernote is how I have done this. All of my notes and emails get saved in Evernote, I clip web pages, save PDF files, and scan any paper I receive into Evernote (I have the Evernote Scanner or use my smartphone camera). 

Here are some resources I used to go paperless: https://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/search/label/paperless 

[Wanderling Reborn 185]

Great ideas, thanks !
 

A few that I would add:

- a dedicated mobile scanner software optimized for multiple page processing. I use Scanbot but there's more than one. It has automated cropping / text enhancement, and automated save (I have it saving to GDrive but I believe Evernote can also be set up). It is significantly faster and more convenient than using a desktop scanner, with acceptable quality even in challenging light. Can create encrypted PDFs. And it's always within reach, unlike a desktop scanner. 

- For people who prefer to write notes by hands, GoodNotes on iOS is a godsend. Not only is it a very decent notepad type program with easy handwriting, but it also has excellent OCR (the best by far on my terrible chicken scratch) and it can be set up to automatically upload a PDF copy of your note to cloud with all of your handwritten notes OCR'd and searchable. 

- For sensitive data stored in the cloud (not EN) I highly recommend Cryptomator. It's a free open source cross-platform tool that encrypts files & scrambles file names. You have to mount it to see the content. Basically like Truecrypt except it uses individual files instead of one huge container.

- The final part of the puzzle is backup. Again, if you're using EN, it's handled on their end. For anything stored in cloud storage like GDrive, I highly recommend getting an alternate storage solution (Onedrive, Dropbox etc) and setting up a one-way sync (backup) or weekly two-way sync using the free CloudHQ service. This way, if one of the cloud storage craps out, you have a copy elsewhere.

- Overall, I find the iOS ecosystem to be significantly more paperless-friendly than Android (and I've used Android for years). This is likely to change eventually, but for now at least, things like Touch-ID enabled bank and password apps, Goodnotes, a variety of scanner apps all make a decent iPhone or iPad an extremely easy tool for going paperless.

[DTLow 5,736]

55 minutes ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

The final part of the puzzle is backup. Again, if you're using EN, it's handled on their end.

For those using Local Notebooks (Mac/Win), EN is not uploading or backing up the data.  
It is strongly advised that users back up this data

[Wanderling Reborn 185]

2 minutes ago, DTLow said:

For those using Local Notebooks (Mac/Win), EN is not uploading or backing up the data.  It is strongly advised that users back up this data

Then I'd suggest the same approach. Put your local notebook in Google Drive, periodically backup to another cloud account using CloudHQ. (This is of course subject to the available space). This way, you have 3 online backups + local.