Business Card Scanning

[nthdgreee 7]

When I take a photo of a business card and within the Android app mark it as a "Business Card" the edges are automatically cropped and some card data is automatically filled into the fields, however when I save it a new note is created with the proper name BC name but the scan/photo of the card never appears in the actual note.

Is this a function of v10 that's still not available or is there something else going on? 

Currently using Samsung Note 10+ with Evernote for Android 10.4   

Thanks

Steve

[PinkElephant 8,115]

No idea in Android. But the mobile clients are similar, so let’s try with iOS:

For iOS I can confirm that business card scanning is still way behind what it used to be. Only a few fields are filled, and the card info won’t copy to the contacts app. The picture does show, and it is possible to add another picture of the rear of the card (or even more). Extracting information does only happen from the first picture, however.

To use it, the build in scanner must be used, either by hitting the arrow beside the „new note“ button and choose „document“, or by clicking on the blue „+“ button and selecting „camera“. After taking the picture, „business card“ can be selected as document type, if it is not autoselected.

[nthdgreee 7]

Thanks for the reply. I had tried it this way too and it didn't work BUT I just discovered something. After the scan of this particular card one of the fields was not automatically filled in (Company Name) I had been manually typing that in before saving it. Just now I tried scanning again but this time didn't add anything manually and NOW when I saved it the card appeared in Evernote.

Just to verify, I went back and did a new scan, manually adding the data as I did before, and wouldn't you know it the card failed to appear. So right now, for me at least, I can scan but not manually add anything else above what Evernote auto fills in.    

[PinkElephant 8,115]

Yes, I found similar restrictions when trying in iOS. But this was some release steps ago, and I didn’t follow up on it. I am using an independent business card scanning app, that extracts much more information, and let’s me edit it before exporting into contacts.

So it was more out of curiosity than real need when I played a little with this feature.

[nthdgreee 7]

Thankfully I don't do too much BC scanning. I can get away with scanning as a PDF and attaching it. Might I ask what app you're using? I wonder if it might be available for Android, also. 

 

Thanks.

[PinkElephant 8,115]

It is called CamCard. They had a classical model when I got it (free plus a one time purchase for Premium), but have switched to a subscription model since. I stick with free, the subscription costs p.a. more than EN ! The free account is limited to 500 cards - so if I need more, I probably have to open another account.

No idea if it exists on Android as well - I only use iOS devices.

[nthdgreee 7]

Found it on the Play Store. Thanks.

[PinkElephant 8,115]

When you try, make sure to select the correct country. It improves the OCR result, because cards in different countries follow different conventions about Lay-out and content. When I had cards from different countries, I sorted them by country, and switched the country while scanning.

[nthdgreee 7]

Thanks for the heads up!

[sbiskie 0]

I am having a similar issue, where I am also on Android (a Note 20).  In my case, not only does the card picture not show up in the note, but while the note is titled "<Person Name > - Business Card", the text that was read doesn't come across to the note either.  So very specifically, the Evernote camera detects it is a buisness card, reads the fields and populates them into name, title,  company, etc. on the screen showing it's a business card, but when proceeding, it only copies the title of the note over and not the business card picture or any of the business card OCR'd content.  NthDegree mentioned that if he did NOT add details on any of the fields that did not OCR properly and came across blank (which I was also doing), then the business card picture would come across.  I've tried both ways (adding content, and just taking what was originally scanned), and both times I just have a note title with no note content.

[Barry Graham 64]

The ability to scan a card and add it to Google Contacts, as well as the ability to scan a card and link to the contact in LinkedIn, were the main reasons I upgraded to Premium.  Taking away these features, especially the ability to add to Contacts, was very disappointing.  There also appears to be no way any more of specifying a default notebook for business cards, which was, at one stage, possible.

[PinkElephant 8,115]

The LinkedIn connection was broken by Microsoft after they acquired LI. You need to address the right people if you want it back. Besides this it happened years ago. If this was your main reason for subscribing, you renewed several times without having that feature.

Scans go to your standard notebook, usually your „Inbox“. It is no problem at all to find all notes with business card information. Just choose the filter type „contains: contacts“, and it will select all notes with business cards. On desktop you can then select them and move them to the notebook you want to use.

There is no possibility to send cards to contacts. Since EN only extracts little information as text fields, I never found this very useful. However inside of EN the full card is searchable, because it is a picture and will be OCRed as such. If you add a picture of the rear side, it will be made searchable as well.

[Barry Graham 64]

1. That is a workaround.  Previously there was a way to select the notebook in advance.  The very reason I want this feature back is so that I don't have to do extra work to move to the card to the right notebook.
2. You may not have found it useful to extract the information as text fields and create a contact in Google, as was previously possible, but many people did find it useful as you can see in other posts.  You can still do in - in another tool - Google Lens.

[PinkElephant 8,115]

The forum is user2user. If you want to contact EN, use the feedback function or issue a support ticket.

And better try a solid business card app, just to learn what you are missing when believing that selecting a notebook and exporting a skosch selection of fields into contacts is what you need.

[Barry Graham 64]

26 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

The forum is user2user. If you want to contact EN, use the feedback function or issue a support ticket.

And better try a solid business card app, just to learn what you are missing when believing that selecting a notebook and exporting a skosch selection of fields into contacts is what you need.

I know what I need in my contacts since I create them often, not just from business cards, and what Evernote offered was good.

[PinkElephant 8,115]

Good for you that you know what you want. Now you can pursue the ways I described to contact EN about it.

From experience a forum discussion won't be the starting point for changes in EN.

[Barry Graham 64]

From my experience using the feedback function or issuing a support ticket isn't much more effective although I agree that a forum isn't the right place.

[PinkElephant 8,115]

Feedback and support tickets will be at the start of a chain of events, and in many cases it will not lead to an action. I can follow some tickets I have issued (and probably many others) to a release fixing things some time later. Just my observation, I have no insight on how this stuff is in fact processed.