(Archived) Bummed about PDF Scanning Limit

[jdownie 1]

I thought I had a good idea... I was going to put my PDF text books into Evernote so that the clipper would remind me about them when i'm trawling google for howtos. It worked for me once on a small PDF, and I found that instead of hoping for a fragment of the answer in some forum post, Evernote reminded me that I already had a whole book on the subject. I thought, "wow, why wouldn't I do that for my whole library?".

Sadly the 100 page limit is aborting my scans. I'm not really worried about the OCR part. Many of my PDFs contain searchable text.

It'd be nice if there could be a "slow lane" for these big PDFs. I wouldn't mind if it took a week for them to get processed. The documents that are currently meeting the requirements could all be put in the "overtaking lane" (how's my metaphor going?). It might mean that those notes would need a tag added to indicate which type of scan the PDF was ultimately subjected to. I can see why that would make documentation and support even less straightforward.

Anyway, does anybody else think that it was almost a good idea?

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Whether it's a good idea (almost) or not may not be at issue. Adding all those hoops you suggested would require at least a fair amount of engineer time. Probably not something high on the priority list. EN tries to be conservative in a lot of respects until they are confident something works well on all platforms. They have been known to increase limits. IE, Dec 2010, they increased the upload limit of free/premium accounts as well as the note size. They've also increased the number of notebooks allowed in ~the past year or so. Someday, the 100 page limit may be increased. Or not, if it's due to a technical limitation. But still probably not high on the priority list, I would guess.

[jdownie 1]

Thanks for the reply BurgersNFries. I was hoping somebody would say something like "wow, great idea", or "yeah, I want that too". Particularly if that somebody what a mover and shaker at Evernote.

C'mawn! Anybody? Nobody?

[gazumped 11,666]

I made a searchable PDF out of my car service and repair manual after a bad experience trying to find something in the index that wasn't called what I thought it was. That file runs to 80MB and 435 pages. Ho hum I thought - I'll upload it anyway; even if only the first 100 pages are searchable, that includes chapter headings and I can always use my PDF reader search functions to find details further on in the manual. However: EN now politely rejects the file and informs me that notes cannot be larger than 50MB. I'm trying to reduce the size of the file by optimising it, but given the size of the type and the importance of the illustrations my only option may be to chop the book into more than one PDF (of 100 pages each forinstance...).

Ironically my OCR software seems much more efficient at creating small PDF files than my actual PDF software (Nitro PDF professional). Splitting an 80MB file up 4 sections, gets me files that are larger than the original full document :?

(All of the above in Windows Vista and Desktop client 4.4)

I'm sure there's a workaround in here somewhere but hey EverNote - if there was some leeway for searchable PDF files, like no page limit and 100MB max you could save me some time.

More seriously had this worked I have several reference manuals that would have been much more accessible (and off my shelves) as fully text-searchable documents. So @jdownie here's one "great idea" and a "yeah, I want that too".

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

You might try downloading the manual from the 'net. IIRC, often the downloaded one may be smaller than a user's scan of the hard copy. Also, IME, if you have the manual, you can open it in PDF viewer & search that way. IME, no need for EN to do the OCR.

[gazumped 11,666]

You might try downloading the manual from the 'net. IIRC, often the downloaded one may be smaller than a user's scan of the hard copy. Also, IME, if you have the manual, you can open it in PDF viewer & search that way. IME, no need for EN to do the OCR.

Cheers for the suggestion, but I'm beginning to think I don't know enough about PDF files - I found a download, but this version is still more than 50MB and does not appear to contain searchable text. My PDF software will convert it into a searchable file of about the same size (there's still lots of illustrations). I meant to explain in the above that when I tried to upload the 85MB file I had already OCR'd it to try to avoid maxing out any servers anywhere...

I also tried more PDF software (Foxit and Nuance) and while one squeezed a test file a lot further down than Nitro, letting the same package loose to optimise my 85MB file got me... an 85MB result. I may have to go sit in the sun for a while before I come back to this.