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(Archived) Best Program for Scanning Documents?


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Before I embark on the (rather painstaking) task of digitizing all of my paper documents, I was wondering if you folks had any advice for the "best" software product to do it? Unfortunately, I don't have the money (okay, probably have the money, just not the desire to plop so much down..) for a Fujitsu -- which probably has great PDF scanning software included -- so anything freeware or reasonably priced would be great.

Don't need a lot of features.. Multipage PDF documents that are OCR-friendly should be about it..

Thanks in advance!

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I think you'll find the software is normally less of an issue than the actual scanner. Pretty much any scanner will "work with" Evernote, since it's easy to get documents into Evernote using an imported/watched folder. If you get a scanner that suits your needs, the software that comes with it will often be sufficient.

For document scanning, I have a Xerox Documate 510. It's got an automatic document feeder (ADF). It's single sided but the Paperport software that came with it has the option to scan the other side. Paperport will then automatically arrange the scans correctly in the resultant PDF. I can load a multipage document into the ADF, scan, turn the pages over & scan the other side & the resultant PDF will have all the pages in the correct order.

If I was in the market for a new document scanner, I would take a look at the Canon P150 (aka "Scantini".)

IMO, some factors for consideration are ability to easily handle multipage docs (IE an ADF), ability to easily handle two sided documents either with hardware or software and speed. It's pretty annoying when you have a stack of docs you want to scan & each page takes a long time to scan.

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I'm trying to use a flatbed scanner, so anything with an ADF would be beneficial.

In the meantime, I don't have any software with the scanner (aside from the drivers) which is why I'm needing software. I have an old version of Adobe, but it doesn't like Vista (that makes two of us!).

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Bought a Canon PIXMA MX860 all in one printer last year. Works well for the volume that I have. ADF and two sided and wireless. If you are looking to do a whole lot of volume, it might not be the best.

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Doesn't the indexing ability on PDF files depend on whether you are talking about an OCR'ed PDF file and whether you are a "paying" user of Evernote? I am a "free" user (as in "cheap") and when I OCR a PDF file in Adobe Acrobat and then attach that file to an Evernote note, it seems that I can find that note when I search on a term that is in the PDF file. I believe if you use a PDF that has not been OCR'ed in Acrobat and attach it to a note in a "paid" account, Evernote will index the PDF in a manner similar to what it does with a JPEG file. I don't think it does this with a "free" account. While I have not been able to check out Evernote's indexing of PDF files that have not been OCR'ed, it seems like this could be a nifty feature if you are saving handwritten documents in PDF form. Evernote seems like it can do a remarkably good job of indexing hand written notes that have been scanned in. I tried it with a hand written document scanned to a JPEG file and even with my not-so-neat handwriting, it did a fair job of indexing the doc. At least now, when I am making hand written notes, I make sure to write neatly for the note title and any important stuff.

I really need to upgrade to a premium account. If nothing else, just to support an outstanding product. This month's commission check should be a good one so maybe in January.....

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If you have a Free account, you can scan single pages as images (e.g. JPEG) and we will process those for search. For PDF scans, you can either use your own OCR software (e.g. my HP all-in-one scanner came with a desktop OCR package), or else you can upgrade to Premium and we'll do the OCR for you.

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Before I embark on the (rather painstaking) task of digitizing all of my paper documents,

Counter point: I find the cost of file cabinets, the hanging file folders, paper tabs; along with the work needed to support all the stored paperwork in the proper files; the space involved; and the time to find mis-filed written documents to be more of a pain than simply scanning the document.

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I have owned over 10 scanners over the years and I have to say I wish I had taken all that money for scanners and all the software like Paperport and other software trying to find a good scanning solution and just spent it on a Fujitsu ScanSnap Scanner.

IT IS THE BEST MONEY I HAVE EVER SPENT!!

HANDS DOWN!

It makes scanning go from a chore to something that I don't even have to think about.

Save your money. Buy a Scansnap and be done.

Fast

Easy

I even scan books.

I cut the binding off my book GTD by David Allan and scanned it it less that 5 minutes.

Bite the bullet and buy the scanner.

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I even scan books.

I cut the binding off my book GTD by David Allan and scanned it it less that 5 minutes.

Bite the bullet and buy the scanner.

How is this possible though? 5 minutes... Impossible! Wouldn't the resulting PDF be 100MB+ if you set it over 600DPI to make it readable?

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I even scan books.

I cut the binding off my book GTD by David Allan and scanned it it less that 5 minutes.

Bite the bullet and buy the scanner.

How is this possible though? 5 minutes... Impossible! Wouldn't the resulting PDF be 100MB+ if you set it over 600DPI to make it readable?

ScanSnap is great, but an entire book in 5 pages? I think the GTD book is about 275 pages.

Even if the OCR is turned off, the scanning time would be 15 seconds per page at best.

5 minutes would only scan 20 pages

Here is a video of ScanSnap in action.

http://blog.evernote.com/2009/05/07/sca ... -scansnap/

In order to scan it at that speed, the OCR was turned off. But I have to call Bogus on part of the video. If you watch closely, at the 17 second mark, the document is still being scanned, but it is already displayed on the Mac screen.

In real life however, the ScanSnap is a wonderful device.

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GraphicConverter, the swiss army knife for images, has a scanning function (Twain; apple-T) I used since the first year of Panther in combination with a low (very low) cost CanonLide25 scanner.

Phil

Thank you very much for the CanonLide scanner mention. :) Looked it up just now and was looking through it. Went through the Canon website to see if there were any successors of the scanner because it seemed that it was an outdated product from the Amazon reviews page. Picked up on the existence of the new Canon Lide scanners - Relatively inexpensive too! (Thought it would be $100+) Seems that it works under Mac too. Most likely going to get it.

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