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 note
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.
Great Show You Guys. I have been playing catch up on listening. However I Had a comment for your paperless show. I often use an iPhone app “JotNot” with my Paperless work flow. It works great! You take a picture from the JotNot App then you can scale it to just the paper, receipt or any document. I use this app daily! Thanks Dennis
Just wanted to take a minute to say thanks so much for the great content you guys are delivering with these podcasts. I’m a new listener but am steadily working on catching up. In the last month (since I began listening) – my Mac workflow has changed drastically (for the better). I’ve change my thinking on security, backups, task management, and am working toward a less paper-dependant life. Thanks for all the great tips. I can safely say that just the addition of Omnifocus (I was a Things user) and my shiny new ScanSnap have been a game-changer for me. Thanks again for all you guys do.
I am using a Canon Scantini with Evernote for document
scanning. There’s several things that I like about Evernote: (1)
more organized than a folder, (2) better recall, and (3) having
access to my documents just about everywhere. I have one might
concern: (1) scanning too many documents and decimating my hard
drive space. Any suggestions on how to maintain positives while
mitigating the negative?
@Brendhan: I find that 99% of my documents can be scanned in B&W @ 300dpi which is readable, printable, OCR-able and takes only a couple of hundred k per document compared to around a megabyte for grayscale or several megabytes for colour.
I have done a lot of experimentation lately with my paperless workflow with OCR on a budget. I started with the software which came with my Canon flatbed scanner which allows me to scan to a searchable PDF in one step and would allow you to scan multiple pages, but the accuracy if the OCR wasn’t as good as I would like. I also bought an app for the iPhone called DocScanner which lets you take photos of text, choose the cropping area, correct them for perspective, clean them up and finally OCR the text and send to Evernote or email. That did a very good job, so I bought the desktop version of that app too.
But after a lot of testing I found that Evernote does a better job of OCR than either of my dedicated scanning apps, and that Preview is fast and easy to do the actual scanning. So my workflow now is to scan pages to PDF and assemble these into a multiple-page PDF document all within Preview, then drop the completed document into Evernote Pro and then delete the originals. Similarly if I’m without my scanner I can snap photos with my iPhone using DocScanner and send them to Evernote from there.
@Scott: Thanks for the info. It’s good to know.
I’ve been going through this episode again having recently saved up enough to get me a scansnap (my HP all-in-one was not up to the size of the job in hand!).
I’ve immediately fallen in love with it, and in combination with Hazel have developed a workflow that makes going through monthly statements ridiculously easy.
David talks about how he uses Hazel to pick out the file name he gives a file and process it accordingly. The DocumentSnap website, among others, mentions the power of the Scansnap software to pick out highlighted text as keywords.
However I haven’t found any of that necessary. A lot of my mail has the same key elements each month – my bank statements, service bills etc. Even a lot of letters that come in from the same people or company will need to be named and filed in a similar fashion. So I just straight out use the OCR.
I set up rules to say ‘if document contains’ and then put in things like ‘Phone Bill’ ‘Account No.’ ‘Company Name’ etc, then name it something appropriate, and file it in the appropriate place. This means I can literally stuff a bunch of paper in the scanner and forget about it, no further processing required.
I’m loving this device!
Dear Katie & David
Thank you both very much for all your time and efforts bringing us Mac Power
Users!!!! Your both the Best! I have found your podcast recently after hearing about MPU on the maccast, and am so grateful for all the help your both providing. I have been scanning all my documents for years and always try to get all new documents, tax returns, or receipts digitally. I am so happy you both produced a show on
going paperless. I have found a great iPhone app called CardStar. With card star you can enter all your grocery cards and other purveyor cards so when you go to a Panera’s or any
purveyor you pull the card up from CardStar, the casheir scans it or types in the # so you get your discount or whatever bonus your card offers. I hated having to have all those
cards on a keychain that you had to fumble with when you went to one of your main shopping haunts.
I have a question I hope you both can answer without any legal problems [EDIT: Question removed - sorry, we can't answer any legal questions outside of our respective jobs.]
My Thanks to you Katie & David.
Sincerely,
Thomas