Paperless

[Chuckaug 0]

I am starting the paperless quest with the help of the new Fujitsu scansnap ix 500. The scanner works extremely well, however I am still struggling with the best way to manage output.

Ideally, I would run a stack of paper through the scanner to take advantage of its speed. This would create a single PDF file or I can set it to create numerous files - each of which is the same number of pages.

The question is: Assuming my stack of papers consists of several documents with different page lengths I will end up with one large PDF file. Is there an easy way to break that file into multipe files each of which contains one document. Can that be done withing the scansnap software or does it require processing with Adobe?

Any advice will be welcomed.

Thanks

Chuck

[cosmin ciobanu 3]

I think the scan software should have this options. or if you have a mac, you can split the pdf in files via Preview app. Or if you have Photoshop, even better.

[Chuckaug 0]

I was hoping the scan software would have the option to split up the PDF - but I can't find it. Was hoping someone else had figured it out.

[Amie Harpe Longstreet 12]

Hi Chuckaug,

I have been using Scansnap for almost one year and love it. I have spent months scanning in about the equivalent of a 9 ft. pile of documents, plus books and photos, and organizing them all in Evernote. I have tried several different methods and settled on this one.

• I scan the documents in the way I want them grouped into a single PDF. So sometimes I might scan only one page at a time, or if a document is multiple pages (e.g. statement, insurance policy, etc.) I will scan those together, or I might group multiple related documents in a batch (e.g. all W-2s and 1099s from my 2012 taxes) if I want them all in one PDF. When I first started going paperless I thought that each document needed to be its own note in Evernote. This was taking me for ever to scan and process. However, with the ability to search on the content of PDFs, I found that scanning groups of closely related documents was more efficient and still enabled me to find what I need easily.
  
• When the scan is done processing, I select the option to save the scan to a folder and I save it to one of several folders I have setup to import into different notebooks. I do not have an Import Folder created for every notebook, but for those that I I have store scanned documents to regularly I have found this to be very helpful in streamlining the scanning and organizing process.
  
• Before I click the save button, I change the default file name to a meaningful name that I want to be the title of the document in Evernote.
  
• After these three steps, my paper documents are scanned, stored in my desired notebook in Evernote, and the notes are named withthe title I want. No further processing necessary and they are fully search able in Evernote.
  

It takes a few more minutes up front, but I have actually found that it saves significantly more time later in processing and organizing the files in Evernote. I initially tried scanning a larger number of documents at a time because I thought it would be more efficient to fill the paper shute on the scanner. But the process of parsing the large files, nameing them, and getting them organized into the right folders in Evernote was much more effort intensive.

I know this doesn't directly answer your question, but I hope it gives you somes ideas about how to process scans a little more efficiently than your current process.

Amie

[Chuckaug 0]

Amie,

That is helpful. I am just starting out with this process of scanning and eliminating paper. Your system sounds pretty efficient.

How do you handle something like a monthly mortgage bill that you would like to store in the same pdf file in which you store the mortgage bill from prior months. I would ideally like to construct one pdf file for all of the monthly bills from the same source. I know I can do this by using Adobe to combine multiple pdfs - however it would be more efficient to do this within the scansnap organizer if possible.

Thanks again,

Chuck

[C6REW 416]

Hi Chuck,

Amie's method is very useful if you adapt it for your own purposes.

With regards to your specific problem you could join the 'Monthly Mortgage Statements' into one pdf, but this would need to done with something like Adobe Acrobat. The problem is that it becomes a time consuming and ultimately huge document.

I would personally scan all documents into a relevant 'Notebook'. So for example if you had a 'Home' notebook and then when you scanned your current months statement in I would name and tag with something like this:

130205 - Mortgage Statement - Feb 2013

Tag: 'Mortgage Statement'

So if you wanted to see all of the 'Mortgage Statement's' it is an easy task of clicking on the tag. The statements will then be in order and you are able to look easily down the list at a specific month and year.

Hope that helps.

Best regards

Chris

[cosmin ciobanu 3]

I just started doing that with my To Do list for app development. Works great! TAGS and note links.

[Amie Harpe Longstreet 12]

Amie,

That is helpful. I am just starting out with this process of scanning and eliminating paper. Your system sounds pretty efficient.

How do you handle something like a monthly mortgage bill that you would like to store in the same pdf file in which you store the mortgage bill from prior months. I would ideally like to construct one pdf file for all of the monthly bills from the same source. I know I can do this by using Adobe to combine multiple pdfs - however it would be more efficient to do this within the scansnap organizer if possible.

Thanks again,

Chuck

Hi Chuck,

I do not have a need to do this, but I do have a few related suggestions for you to consider if you are just starting to go paperless.

1. Several years ago I started switching all of my accounts to paperless billing. For all utilities, banking, credit cards, mortgage statements, etc, I have elected the option to stop receiving paper bills and statements. Each month I receive an email when the bill or statement is available on line. I click a link in the email, login to the organizations website, and download the document in a PDF format. I save them to an import folder on my hard drive so they are automatically imported to Evernote and I am done.
   
2. You might want to check at filethis.com. You can also find it in the Evernote Trunk. filethis is a web service that checks your online accounts each week for new documents (statements, bills, etc) and automatically sends them to Evernote. They have support for many of the companies I do business with and it is great. I don't have to do or think about anything to have a searchable record in Evernote of all my statements and bills.
   

Amie