Automatic tagging of imported PDF from watched folder

[pbmthomas 0]

In day 1 of going paperless with a scansnap ix500. 

 

For general purpose/work related stuff which isn't sensitive I'm using my main evernote account on my PC and everything is fine. 

 

However, for bills/mortgage etc etc stuff that I consider sensitive, I want to keep this away from my main evernote account, and away from my main PC (a bit paranoid). So, I do the following:

1) scan into from scansnap into a folder on a microserver I run for backing up purposes (OCR done with scansnap)

2) output is saved as a pdf

3) evernote (free version, running on microserver) monitors this folder on the microsever and imports any new PDF into a local notebook (and deletes the PDF)

4) the pdf is searchable thanks to scansnap (not possible via evernote with a free/local account)

 

However, I'd like evernote to create tags for the notes it creates using information that I put in the filename. Is this possible?

 

Thanks

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

In day 1 of going paperless with a scansnap ix500. 

 

For general purpose/work related stuff which isn't sensitive I'm using my main evernote account on my PC and everything is fine. 

 

However, for bills/mortgage etc etc stuff that I consider sensitive, I want to keep this away from my main evernote account, and away from my main PC (a bit paranoid). So, I do the following:

1) scan into from scansnap into a folder on a microserver I run for backing up purposes (OCR done with scansnap)

2) output is saved as a pdf

3) evernote (free version, running on microserver) monitors this folder on the microsever and imports any new PDF into a local notebook (and deletes the PDF)

4) the pdf is searchable thanks to scansnap (not possible via evernote with a free/local account)

 

However, I'd like evernote to create tags for the notes it creates using information that I put in the filename. Is this possible?

 

Thanks

AFAIK, no.

[gazumped 11,666]

With my old scansnap S1500 I scan to PDF in one folder,  changing the name of the files as they save to something containing the date of the document,  the source,  the content and any other keywords I can think of.  I then OCR the folder and move all the files into my Evernote Import Folder (Windows).  I use import folders for different notebooks,  including a local one.  That way I avoid tags,  because as BnF says,  AFAIK there's no way to auto assign them.

[pbmthomas 0]

OK - thanks. I'd done some searching and not found anything, so thanks for confirming.

 

It seems odd, since you can do it with email subject lines etc. All the code must be there to do it. 

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

With my old scansnap S1500 I scan to PDF in one folder,  changing the name of the files as they save to something containing the date of the document,  the source,  the content and any other keywords I can think of.  I then OCR the folder and move all the files into my Evernote Import Folder (Windows).  I use import folders for different notebooks,  including a local one.  That way I avoid tags,  because as BnF says,  AFAIK there's no way to auto assign them.

 

That's what I do too. 

 

 

OK - thanks. I'd done some searching and not found anything, so thanks for confirming.

 

It seems odd, since you can do it with email subject lines etc. All the code must be there to do it. 

 

No one said it's impossible.  Just that it's not possible now.  Email clearly goes through a different channel, since it's done on the server side.  Plus, IIRC, it strips the notebook/tag info from the subject line before placing it in your EN account.  Whereas when adding files through an import folder, any auto tagging would need to be added to the WIndows client.  And...I don't want it changing my file name nor do I want to add extraneous info to the file name (just so EN can auto tag it) that I keep on my hard drive (b/c I normally keep a copy of the file on my hard drive since I'm guy shy of the whole "eggs in one basket" thing. SInce I already do what Gaz does, I can simply refine my search by doing an intitle search, rather than tags.

 

It could be that EN has this on their Windows client to-do list but it's a lower priority than other things.  No way for us to know, since they don't publish their roadmap or ETAs.

[pbmthomas 0]

Using multiple folders to import to multiple workbooks seems like an excellent idea. I'll do that for the time being to give a basic level of organisation (e.g. banking/bills/tax etc.)

 

BNF - I'm not complaining, it just seems like an obvious feature to include given they have the folder monitoring option and obviously think offline tagging is useful (hence email support). Then again, my situation is probably unusual since I connect to my microserver via remote client only when I need to, but Evernote client is always churning away on it. I'd imagine most people have the client accessible when they do the scanning (as I do for all my other evernote needs), whereas I want it to function with a degree of autonomy on my microserver so I'm not confronted with a massive list of unorganised notes if I need to search for something after a week or so of non-accessing. 

 

Anyway, gazumped's solution lets me do some of what I'd like. Thanks!

[jefito 5,589]

OK - thanks. I'd done some searching and not found anything, so thanks for confirming.

 

It seems odd, since you can do it with email subject lines etc. All the code must be there to do it. 

At a guess, the code that does this is on the Evernote server, as emails go through there first. On the other hand, import folders in the Windows client operate on your local Windows operate without going to the Evernote servers, so it's not quite as simple as saying "all of the code must be there" (notice I'm not saying that this is the hardest code to implement, though).

 

That being said, I've felt for awhile that Evernote would really benefit from having a rules-based system (a la GMail) that let's you automatedly perform operations in notes that come into your account, from any source, including auto-import.

 

Beyond that, I'm reasonably certain that you could implement a little front-end for this use case using PowerShell and the Evernote script program ENSCript.exe. PowerShell can do watched folders, process filenames, and invoke ENScript to do the import, using the 'createNotes' option, with which you can specify tags, notebook, attachment (which is what you'd use in your case), title, etc.. 

[pbmthomas 0]

Ah, I'd not realised there was a scripting language for evernote (still relatively new to it). I'll cook something up with that. Thanks a lot!

[jefito 5,589]

Ah, I'd not realised there was a scripting language for evernote (still relatively new to it). I'll cook something up with that. Thanks a lot!

More like a separate program, ENScript.exe, that you can use to do some basic Evernote operations via an actual scripting language. One thing that's cool is that you can use it to do Evernote search queries on your account, and have the results be displayed in the Evernote client. I also use it to guide doing backups of my local account to .ENEX format on a notebook-by-notebook basis, since .ENEX doesn't preserve notebook information.