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HELP: Anyone using a ScanSnap 1500M?


rskoss

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I ordered one and it should be here this week. I'm trying to plan how I'm going to use it to get rid of a lot of paper around here. I'd be interested in hearing other people's organization schemes.

Does the 1500M produce OCR'd PDFs, or do I have to run it through something like Acrobat first? Since I'm on a Mac, Spotlight searches PDF's, so my first thoughts are to only put in Evernote the stuff I want to see on multiple devices. Research notes would be handy on my iPhone, but last year's phone bill - not so much.

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Got the scanner installed yesterday. As in all things Mac, everything just works.

Did a few experiments with local notebooks, do OCR or not, etc. I found that letting the ScanSnap supplied software do the OCR is just painful. Scan and wait several minutes before it finished before I could scan again. It quickly became obvious that I needed a premium account (I knew it was coming, just a matter of time. The more I throw into Evernote, the more I want to put into Evernote).

So the procedure that I've settled on is that everything just gets scanned directly to Evernote. If you watch the ScanSnap videos, that's exactly how it works. Put up to 50 pages into the scanner, hit the scan button, and it very quickly gets scanned and added to Evernote, who then syncs it and does the OCR in the background, and on the next sync, I can search for words in the scanned document. I can scan just as fast as the scanner can suck through paper - and that's pretty quick.

Today I empty my filing cabinet!

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Thanks for the summary. Note that you can right-click on the PDF inside Evernote to get an option to open the OCR'ed version of the PDF in your preferred PDF viewing app. From there, you can select+copy+paste text that we found, or Save that alternate PDF form off onto your hard drive.

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  • 2 years later...

I was just wondering: If I fold my Fujitsu scanscan S1500 so that it is completely closed and compact (ie: fold bottom part up then fold top part down) I see that the light inside is continuously on (and sometimes flashes) even though it is not in use. The only way that I can shut that light is to fold the top part down while the bottom part is extended out. Only then does it appear to be truly shut down. In fact, the icon in the tray has a red line through it under this configuration. THis is slightly annoying because it means that I can't keep it in its most compact configuration when I don't use it. Anyone else notice this?

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I was just wondering: If I fold my Fujitsu scanscan S1500 so that it is completely closed and compact (ie: fold bottom part up then fold top part down) I see that the light inside is continuously on (and sometimes flashes) even though it is not in use. The only way that I can shut that light is to fold the top part down while the bottom part is extended out. Only then does it appear to be truly shut down. In fact, the icon in the tray has a red line through it under this configuration. THis is slightly annoying because it means that I can't keep it in its most compact configuration when I don't use it. Anyone else notice this?

I have the ScanSnap S1500M, same hardware as S1500 but with Mac software instead of Windows. I do not notice what you describe. You might need to be sure the bottom part is fully closed prior to closing the top. Also, any of the extensible parts need to be fully retracted in order for the off switch to be fully engaged.

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Another piece of advice: Before scanning thousands of things into Evernote think very very carefully about your organizational scheme. Key words and conventions should be meticulously worked out. Statements, receipts, bills, premiums etc should be named in a rigorous convention. The order of the names should be codified. The way you use dates should be absolutely standardized.

eg: ADP_Payroll_03122012 the company name first, underscores or spaces (pick your convention), date by service or by scan date (decide)

eg: BC JS premium 032012 Blue cross premium for John Smith for month of March (not the date convention is different here)

eg: Citi Stmt 032012 note that Stmt is singular. I have other notes which merge an entire years worth of statement eg: Citi Stmts 2012

There are dozens of other examples of this. The bottom line is think it out carefully before you go wild with scanning. Add judicious tags if you feel it's necessary.

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  • Level 5*

Another piece of advice: Before scanning thousands of things into Evernote think very very carefully about your organizational scheme. Key words and conventions should be meticulously worked out. Statements, receipts, bills, premiums etc should be named in a rigorous convention. The order of the names should be codified. The way you use dates should be absolutely standardized.

eg: ADP_Payroll_03122012 the company name first, underscores or spaces (pick your convention), date by service or by scan date (decide)

eg: BC JS premium 032012 Blue cross premium for John Smith for month of March (not the date convention is different here)

eg: Citi Stmt 032012 note that Stmt is singular. I have other notes which merge an entire years worth of statement eg: Citi Stmts 2012

There are dozens of other examples of this. The bottom line is think it out carefully before you go wild with scanning. Add judicious tags if you feel it's necessary.

i don't disagree, but a think it doesn't have to sound so frightening/daunting.

in my case, i give everything a date (120404) and a few keywords (blue cross premium). that's usually enough to find it again, and i don't put much more work into most notes. tags, notebooks, random character strings (in my case), note links, etc. are all icing on the cake. of course, the more avenues you have to find the files, the better off you are, so it doesn't hurt.

but even more than titles and all that other stuff, it's really important to ocr these files, or at least scan them in a way that ensures evernote will do it (they have certain restrictions). if the content isn't indexed, then you are going to have big problems later.

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  • Level 5

There are dozens of other examples of this. The bottom line is think it out carefully before you go wild with scanning. Add judicious tags if you feel it's necessary.

Good points.

And for those older notes, here is what I do to clean up the titles.

  • Use search to narrow the List Vew to notes for a specific company. (Snippet and Thumbnail views don't work as well)
  • Rearrange and stretch the columns out so I can only see Created, Title, Tags, and Notebook.
  • Then I can easily see which titles need to be tidied up.

.

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