In this episode, we discuss all the steps necessary to take your piles of paper and get it into your Mac and organized.
Links of Interest
Fujitsu ScanSnap 300MFujitsu ScanSnap 1500M
Prizmo – Scan with your Camera
ScreencastsOnline Hazel episode
Encrypted Disk Image Video (MacSparky Screencast)
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[...] discussed on Mac Power Users episode 3, “Going Paperless,” the nice people at Smile On My Mac put together an Applescript [...]
Great episode and great topic. I’m number one fan of Ironic Software, so Leap+Yep+Deep+Fresh+Hazel+SparseDiskImage is my solution.
I like the way you go covering several solution but I also miss going deep with a full solution, probably the better (on your opinion of course).
Thangs
Hi
Script has two errors in it. First is that the quotation marks are not the right format. Should be ” to be recognized. The second is a syntax error, that states “Expected end of line but found identifier” for the line ending in “ocr aPage”. Any savvy Apple-scripters out that that has the right solution?
Firstly what a great podcast, I’m looking forward to your next topic. But I do feel that you should have looked into Devonthink pro a bit more as it has all the features of the other ones you use and more. Also it loves working with the Snapscan. As you say in your podcast, everyone has there own way of doing things but since the update to version 2.0 it is all you could ask for to keep track of everything and be able to seach it all.
All the best with your new shows.
Phil
[...] in taking your business paperless? Episode #03 of the Mac Power Users podcast is a brilliant look at all the available tools and software to go [...]
Nice podcast but I think you missed a product that will handle the whole stream–from scanner->thru OCR–>and into document management: DevonThink Pro Office. Uses the Abbey OCR engine and does a great, great job. I’ve been using it with my Scansnap for several years now. Keep my 1.5GB database on Dropbox so I actually have access from multiple machines.
Also, not to be a troll, but when you say you don’t want to trust proprietary software to store important documents, what do you call an encrypted Apple sparse image? Can that .dmg file be rendered usable if you don’t have access to Mac OS? If not, then it’s proprietary.
Paperless is included in the MacUpdate Bundle for a couple of more days, so I’m trying to find out some more information before purchasing.
If I’m importing existing PDF’s, etc. does Paperless make a COPY of the PDF for it’s own database or does it simply reference the current location of the existing document.
In other words, do I leave documents where they’re currently stored or do I delete them after importing into Paperless.
To Michelle: you delete your documents after importing into Paperless.
Note: great application, real time-saver.
The only problem is: the day the get out of business, if we’re still around, well, we’ll have to export everything from Paperless to PDFs and here we go again…
Gabor- I spent a little bit of time with the trial version of Paperless. There should be no need to export out of Paperless. If you right-click on the Paperless library and “show contents”, you’ll find 3 folders and an sql file. One folder is the backups, one folder is the thumbnails (.jpg) and one folder is the “Receipts”/”Documents” (depending on which kind of library you set up.
Inside the Receipts/Documents folder is nested folders based on year/month of the scanned item. Inside those folders are the .pdf files that were created when they were brought into the Paperless library.
So if Paperless does go out of business and if the application were no longer able to function, just right-click and drag out the Receipts/Document folder that holds it all. The files are nicely nested by time period and the file names are labeled with their name/date.
Nice structure.
Michelle- Thanks, this is fantastic!
I just have a little problem: where is the Paperless library?
I don’t see it in Application Support. I performed a Spotlight search and couldn’t find it either.
Gabor-
I don’t see a place in preferences to save, so it must have been prompted the first time. Do a Spotlight search for the extension .dwlibrary (for a document library) or .rwlibrary (for a receipt library).
I did notice that in the preferences, there is a place to checkmark “write metadata to PDF’s” and “append date to filenames of documents”. I have everything on that preference panel checked and that makes it easy to identify the files in the “package contents”.
Hopefully, your spotlight search will find your files. And then make sure that those items are checked in your preferences. This will make the documents easier to identify on their own.
I think Ive used every information organizing solution out there. I started out with yojimbo, then used together, then evernote, and after using devonthink office pro I had to stay with that. The reason I switched to devonthink from evernote was as you guys said, the security, I was concerned with having my important documents on the web. I feel safer having everything stored locally. Plus the amount of features devonthink has compared to the rest of those apps is huge. The main reason peeple dont use devonthink as you said, is that its overkill. which is true if you arent archiving that much info, But for the amount of data I have, that continues to grow, its perfect for me. good podcast, you guys were on the money.
I recommend using Knox (https://www.knoxformac.com/) for handling the sparse disk images. While it uses standard disk images, it makes it easy to open and create them. I have an encrypted disk image with all my financial documents on it. Plus, I have a DEVONthink database that indexes everything on the image. So, you can use the nested folder system on that disk image and you can take advantage of DT’s search capabilities. The folder system is reflected in the DT database automatically.