Business card scanning.

[LKV 0]

Hello,

I have multiple business cards piled up from my work trips. I was wondering if I can batch scan these cards into evernote. Open to other suggestions to getting my cards imported into evernote or contacts or outlook. Thank you in advance for your help. 

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Personally I use the app CamCard to scan and import business cards into my iCloud contacts via my iPhone.

You can use the build in scanner of the EN app as well, it offers a business card option. But how it continues I do not know, since I never used that feature.

[gazumped 11,664]

14 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

the build in scanner of the EN app as well

Works pretty well - the card needs to be in a good light and on a contrasting background,  and the app only deals with one side (still) but will save a 'contact' note with searchable name and details.  There's no way to export that data outside of Evernote.  If there are two-sided cards it's always possible to take two snaps and merge the two notes.  Any picture taken with Evernote's in-app camera can be saved to a note as a card,  a picture or a couple of types of document which involves some pre-processing to help OCR.  All of this is searchable within the app.

[DTLow 5,736]

16 hours ago, LKV said:

Open to other suggestions to getting my cards imported into evernote

I use the Evernote Scannable app (IOS)    
There's also a camera function built  into the Evernote/IOS app

Sorry, no batch mode

More info at https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005777-How-to-use-your-phone-to-scan-business-cards-into-Evernote

[LKV 0]

thanks all. I was hoping there is a way to use a scanner to scan multiple cards. Can I scan a business card into a PDF and drop it into EN? Will OCR work in that case? That way I can buy a physical scanner that scans multiple cards and import it into evernote. 

[DTLow 5,736]

50 minutes ago, LKV said:

thanks all. I was hoping there is a way to use a scanner to scan multiple cards. Can I scan a business card into a PDF and drop it into EN? Will OCR work in that case? That way I can buy a physical scanner that scans multiple cards and import it into evernote. 

No, that's not an option

The Business Card feature does not work with  pre-scanned images

[PinkElephant 8,103]

However it is probably not a time saver to do it as a batch.

From my experience even with an app designed for this, some rework is inevitable. Especially when card designers went over the content, a lot of mistakes happen. Rare fonts, graphic elements, grouping of information moved to the rear (where OCR will not catch it) means you have to review each card after scanning, and type some corrections.

So batching just means to have a lot of rework on a big heap. I prefer to do it card by card, and see the pile melt away.

[gazumped 11,664]

I'm hazy on the practicality,  but I photographed and then packed some books away a while ago that had very designed covers.  At the time I was disappointed - the intention was that if I searched for a title or an author,  Evernote would tell me which box is was stored in.  (I have a lot of books...) 

It didn't work then, because of the mixed colours and fonts (and shapes) of the cover headlines.  I've searched since however and OCR seems to have caught up somewhat. 

You may find that just adding your cards as JPG or PNG images to Evernote notes will at least make them searchable.  Worst case you'd have to title or tag each note with a company or name to search them down.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

OCR is always getting better. I remember the time when special fonts were created to print documents so they could easily and with good results been OCRed. Technically speaking a piece of impressive science, but why print a doc first to OCR it again ... ? For a human the fonts were somewhat hard to read.

What I expect from a business card scanner is something else than simple searchability. I want the content of the card been taken to my contacts, placed in the appropriate fields for easy use. 

To take a picture, file it into EN and have it searchable (but not being able to export the OCRed result) for me is not what I want and need.

[gazumped 11,664]

2 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

To take a picture, file it into EN and have it searchable (but not being able to export the OCRed result) for me is not what I want and need.

Fair point - I wonder what would happen if you took a number of images of business cards and imported them to a PDF file,  then OCR'd the PDF file?  NB Evernote does not (I believe) OCR images on PDF pages.  This would have to be an Adobe or NAPS2 -like third party scan.  The OCR'd file would then be searchable in Evernote,  and the contents of a page would - to some extent- be copy/ pastable into another document.

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