Scannable Auto-Naming?

[sirjamesie 3]

Hello! 

I was wondering if there is a function for Scannable (or a 3rd party scanner for that matter) that can "auto-name" scanned document titles using OCR? 

I have hundreds of documents I'd like to scan but naming them takes forever.  Is there anyway to automate this? 

Thanks!

J

[agsteele 3,055]

I don't think that Scannable is the tool for this task.  In fact I cannot think of a program that would do that for you in one go. It's possible that someone might know of something but you might find as much help from your favourite search engine.

[PinkElephant 8,694]

Scanning software can provide for it - often you can create naming rules as well. My experience is that often the OCR results are too inconsistent to allow for a good naming result. So I still type the file name manually.

With the EN import folder the file name is used as note title. A little effort pays for itself by avoiding rework with the note title.

[gazumped 12,020]

I did some bulk document scanning a few (10!) years ago and was careful with the OCR - after a few checks that the process actually worked to my satisfaction,  I let the scanner set one of its default titles.  I have a lot of notes still with titles like "2013_01_15_12_08_14.pdf" (which is actually a cutting from the Sunday Telegraph about motor insurance in April 1985 - don't ask!). 

I use a 'triage' system on re-naming - if one or more of these comes up in a search,  I'll go through them and rename to something more relevant like "19850430 - Telegraph - motor insurance" (which is what this random note now is*) but if I don't find them in searches I leave them be as my standing archive of old information...

* I don't generally use tags if I can avoid them - I do scan to folder,  because any mistakes or sudden inspirations can be dealt with there,  including renaming.  But tags are not available as such.  My keywords are in the title.  Mostly.

[sirjamesie 3]

1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

Scanning software can provide for it - often you can create naming rules as well. My experience is that often the OCR results are too inconsistent to allow for a good naming result. So I still type the file name manually.

Do you recall which scanning software does that?  Preferably looking for one that has iPhone camera scanning.  I've tried about 4 or 5 and can't seem to find one that auto-names the scan using the OCR.  

Thanks!

[PinkElephant 8,694]

In my case it’s a desktop scanning software (ScanSnap Manager), provided with the scanner.

There is a software ScanSnap Cloud for iOS that does automatic naming, but it probably works with Fujitsu scanners only.

[sirjamesie 3]

1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

In my case it’s a desktop scanning software (ScanSnap Manager), provided with the scanner.

There is a software ScanSnap Cloud for iOS that does automatic naming, but it probably works with Fujitsu scanners only.

Ah good idea but yes indeed it does require a Fujitsu scanner.  After a bunch more research I was able to find SwiftScan though which has automatic naming!  It's $40 a year but that's reasonable for the amount of time I hope it saves me. 

Edit: SwiftScan is now $100 a year.  However I was able to find another option CamScanner that is $50 and $20 with Education discount. 

Edited March 10, 2023 by sirjamesie
Updated prices.