Get a Scanner!

[Random Walker]

I just bought myself a nice stand alone scanner. It has truly improved the quality of my life! The paper clutter of documents around my house has tremendously improved. The piece of mind is amazing. So much easier to be organized with scanned paperless files in a computer than with manilla folders and file cabinets. I've turned into a scanning monster. I strongly recommend a stand alone scanner over one of tha all-in-one printers. Scan speed tremendously affects ease of use and likelihood of truly using paperless files.

Dave

[Toons]

Couldn't stay as organized and clutter free as I try to be without one, been scanning and throwing away the paper for years,
Just finished scanning some documents and saving them to Google Drive

[armeliusc]

I've been doing this for a while, although I have been using the scanner at work (it's a big industrial scanner/printer/copy machine). I may be thinking to get one at home and open to recommendation. What scanner (brand / type) do you have ?

[JerLon]

Any recommendations that fit this bill:

1. Color and B & W
2. Creates Scannable PDF's
3. Duplex Scanning
4. High Speed (not just the scan but processing the scan into a PDF)
5. Automatic and logical naming conventions

Maybe the software is more important than hardware on several of these options.

[midareff]

I use a Canon MX870 multi function machine. Photo quality printing in color or b+w, document feed (many pages) or platen, simplex or duplex from either source, excellent software to save (renamed) as jpeg, adobe doc, etc.

[Random Walker]

I read the Amazon reviews and chose the Fujitsu S1500. It seems to be head and shoulders above the rest. It is a little expensive at about 420.00 but well worth it. I would not pay the extra money for the deluxe bundle which comes with some filing software. The only complaint anyone seems to have about the machine is the lack of TWAIN driver. This means you can't use it from within some common programs. But that has zero effect on the ability to scan to PDF and file the PDF wherever you want. Moreover the price includes a full version of Adobe Acrobat (not just Adobe Reader) so you can manipulate the PDFs any way you want and turn them into word docs etc. Really can't recommend highly enough. Once I got facile with it, I was looking for excuses to scan. Really easy to use. It has only one button on it, a big blue Scan button.

Dave

[Jay69]

If you are starting with a huge pile, one of these will work like a champ, they go on sale ever so often:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16838115052

We have a pile of old snap shots I'm going to run the the above scanner, the flat bed works better for photos but for 95% of them the sheet feed scanner will be just fine, I tested a good dozen so far.

Were down to limited scaning now so just the a plain old all-in-one works just find. Most everything I can download in PDF. At years end we download the past years bank statement, cc statments etc for the year.

[Random Walker]

Fujitsu S1500
Duplex- does both sides at once
Color
Fast
Naming convention not so good, uses dates, but easy to overwrite with your own

Dave

[Optimistic]

I've considered this recently as well; however, I'm nervous about parting with some hard copies. For example, I obviously still want to hold onto the hard copy of my life insurance policy. Are there other documents that shouldn't be imaged? What about receipts? For example, I purchased a washing machine recently with my American Express card because it has an extended warranty benefit. If the washing machine fails 2 years from now, is there any reason to believe American Express would insist on the original receipt?

[William4u]

The Fujitsu S1500 is great. I use it all the time.

[Toons]

I've been doing this for a while, although I have been using the scanner at work (it's a big industrial scanner/printer/copy machine). I may be thinking to get one at home and open to recommendation. What scanner (brand / type) do you have ?

Superb All In One for my needs and and easy wireless setup,,,,

Canon

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Canon-PIXMA-M ... ct+Reviews

[BigFoot48]

One reason I like scanning everything in sight is that some day, if I'm lucky, I expect to be in an extended care facility, maybe a small one two room apartment like my mother lived in for many years. I know there won't be room for rows of scrapbooks or photo albums, but I think there will be room for a computer with all those photos and stuff in it, for my enjoyment and recollections until the end. Just some Bogleheads-like planning ahead.

[BHawks87]

If someone wants to scan items but doesn't want to dish out the money for a scanner then you can get a scanner app for your smart phone. You take a picture of your papers and then they are converted to a PDF file. This was a life saver while I was in school. Its very useful for when on the go as well. You can scan a document/receipt/menu/whatever and then email it or sync it to your drop box.

[CaliJim]

Reiterating the previous recommendation - I've had the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 for a while now and like it very much.

[Toons]

If someone wants to scan items but doesn't want to dish out the money for a scanner then you can get a scanner app for your smart phone. You take a picture of your papers and then they are converted to a PDF file. This was a life saver while I was in school. Its very useful for when on the go as well. You can scan a document/receipt/menu/whatever and then email it or sync it to your drop box.

Thanks for the heads up on this,,just downloaded app to Itouch ,works great

[furwut]

And now that we have everything scanned we do have backups right? Perhaps a local backup on another hard drive, an offsite backup and finally an in the cloud backup.

[Sidney]

all-in-one works for me. I rarely have more than 4-5 pages. All statements come PDF now already. Most expenses on credit card with downloaded statements. Few checks but bank scans for me. Tax returns all come out as PDFs in software. Am I missing anything?

[Sidney]

And now that we have everything scanned we do have backups right? Perhaps a local backup on another hard drive, an offsite backup and finally an in the cloud backup.

and just as important. We do test restores to verify that the stuff is out there, right? Right?

[magicmom]

Canoscan lide 100 $50.00 Amazon have had it for several years very easy to use.

[rustymutt]

If you are starting with a huge pile, one of these will work like a champ, they go on sale ever so often:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16838115052

We have a pile of old snap shots I'm going to run the the above scanner, the flat bed works better for photos but for 95% of them the sheet feed scanner will be just fine, I tested a good dozen so far.

Were down to limited scaning now so just the a plain old all-in-one works just find. Most everything I can download in PDF. At years end we download the past years bank statement, cc statments etc for the year.

Save some money, and get some sent to Bogleheads.org

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001V9 ... B001V9LQH0

[e625]

This was a timely thread for me. I was looking for a scanner yesterday.

The Scansnap S1500 is discontinued (per the Fujitsu website); replaced very recently by the iX500. Obviously it's still available from online shops though.

So, while the iX500 may have a few new features worth waiting for (newegg didn't show it yet), there may also be some discounts coming on the S1500's. It looked like the new one is around the same pricepoint.

I decided to wait a couple weeks to see what happens.

[stevep001]

I have to second all of the other recommendations of the Fujitsu ScanSnap. I have the S300 -- the grandparent of many of the ones discussed here -- and it's excellent.

Once you have the scans OCRed, you don't need to bother naming the PDFs -- just leave them in a big pile and use the index feature in Windows to quickly find the one you want.

[bertilak]

I've considered this recently as well; however, I'm nervous about parting with some hard copies. For example, I obviously still want to hold onto the hard copy of my life insurance policy. Are there other documents that shouldn't be imaged? What about receipts? For example, I purchased a washing machine recently with my American Express card because it has an extended warranty benefit. If the washing machine fails 2 years from now, is there any reason to believe American Express would insist on the original receipt?

I took advantage of AMEX's extended warranty once. I did not have to submit a receipt since they already had an itemized transaction in the records. I just told them which transaction it was. I was able to do everything via telephone and email and AMEX simply credited the amount to my card. What they *did* want was a copy of the warranty which I found on the manufacturer's website. (At the time I didn't have a scanner so couldn't easily make an electronic copy.) Of course everything could also have been done via snail mail.

Not all the AMEX transactions are itemized and I don't know what the rules are for this so you might want to check once the statement becomes available. And don't forget to get a copy of the warranty.

[Jay69]

This was a timely thread for me. I was looking for a scanner yesterday.

The Scansnap S1500 is discontinued (per the Fujitsu website); replaced very recently by the iX500. Obviously it's still available from online shops though.

So, while the iX500 may have a few new features worth waiting for (newegg didn't show it yet), there may also be some discounts coming on the S1500's. It looked like the new one is around the same pricepoint.

I decided to wait a couple weeks to see what happens.

Thanks for the heads up, I'm going to keep an eye open for a close out.

[Jay69]

And now that we have everything scanned we do have backups right? Perhaps a local backup on another hard drive, an offsite backup and finally an in the cloud backup.

and just as important. We do test restores to verify that the stuff is out there, right? Right?

I keep three copies, one on the HD, one in my fire box in the house, one in a fire box at either my mothers or my detached garage. The 2 drives in the house are up to date while the other one could be a month out of date. I'm not crazy about cloud storage; never know who is looking at it!!!

Then I ask myself how many copies do I need, when I was all paper I only had one copy, I did not make a second copy of much of anything and store it off site, I think we can take it too far sometimes. I'm more worried about my pictures than my bank and tax statements, when I add pictures that’s when I do the backup.

I have been using Robocopy for backing up all of pics, videos, finances, etc about a 1 gig today. Been using Robocopy for the last 8 years or so, works great. I like the fact it’s an exact copy with no compression and it’s fast. At the work place we run Robocopy 4 times a day for about 1.5TB of daily working drawings, still loving it. Matter of fact they adding Multithreading that I have yet to turn on.

If anybody would like a sample of the batch file that I use for Robocopy I would be glad to post it here. It’s a line command that is comes native with Windows that many don't seem to know about.

[ObliviousInvestor]

If you are starting with a huge pile, one of these will work like a champ, they go on sale ever so often:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16838115052

We have a pile of old snap shots I'm going to run the the above scanner, the flat bed works better for photos but for 95% of them the sheet feed scanner will be just fine, I tested a good dozen so far.

Were down to limited scaning now so just the a plain old all-in-one works just find. Most everything I can download in PDF. At years end we download the past years bank statement, cc statments etc for the year.

Save some money, and get some sent to Bogleheads.org

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001V9 ... B001V9LQH0

Here is the link, using the Bogleheads affiliate tag: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001V9 ... ads.org-20

[stan1]

I've had a Fujitsu S1300 for about 4 years and am very happy with it. Duplex always works. I've had a few misfeeds when scanning pages of different sizes (easy for the smaller item to get twisted by 5 or 10 degrees) so I usually scan smaller items separately. Much easier to use and faster than a bed scanner, although I still have a cheap Canon bed scanner for photos where I want the scan to be "perfect" instead of "good".

If you don't have a huge volume of paper I think the S1300 will work for most people, plus it is small/light enough that you can put it into a briefcase or backpack if you want to take it with you to do some scanning (I've done this for relatives).

The Fujitsu Scansnap scanners are expensive -- but worth it. Very solid construction and should last a long time.

[sunspotzsz]

Any fast scanner that does OCR automatically?

I want the pdf to be searchable.

[Jay69]

Any fast scanner that does OCR automatically?

I want the pdf to be searchable.

Searchable is nice for larger documents, we will use that for 200 page spec docs. But I find for tax docs, bank statement that OCR is not that big of deal for me anyway.

[Random Walker]

The Fujitsu S1500 comes with a full copy of Adobe Acrobat. I think this makes the documents searchable. I haven't tried it yet. But I'm pretty sure this is a big advantage of the Fujitsu. One great advantage of coming with Acrobat is the program allows a person to easily combine multiple PDFs into a single PDF. So it is easy to add newly scanned items to a previously generated file of scans.

Dave

[Dealmaster00]

yep i just use my smartphone, no need of a scanner for me

[sdrone]

Fyi, lifehacker.com recently had a feature on using the Doxie scanner for this type of thing.

http://lifehacker.com/5973033/how-i-tur ... n-two-days

I've had a couple of scanners, and they just don't seem to let me do this type of thing quickly - especially when it comes to working with multiple page bills. I like this "staple" feature of the Doxie software; I may check out the Doxie.

[Jay69]

The Fujitsu S1500 comes with a full copy of Adobe Acrobat. I think this makes the documents searchable. I haven't tried it yet. But I'm pretty sure this is a big advantage of the Fujitsu. One great advantage of coming with Acrobat is the program allows a person to easily combine multiple PDFs into a single PDF. So it is easy to add newly scanned items to a previously generated file of scans.

Dave

Dave, that's one thing nice about the deal is Acrobat, I think thats about a $100 program if I recall. You can drag and drop other files right in a well like pictures. I have not done this but you could put a years worth of bank statments in one file then bookmark each one. More work than its worth plus my luck one file would go to heck and loose it all!

Just be sure you date you files so they sort well, I use somthing like "2013-25-04 TCF Bank Statement.PDF"

[jebmke]

And now that we have everything scanned we do have backups right? Perhaps a local backup on another hard drive, an offsite backup and finally an in the cloud backup.

and just as important. We do test restores to verify that the stuff is out there, right? Right?

I keep three copies, one on the HD, one in my fire box in the house, one in a fire box at either my mothers or my detached garage. The 2 drives in the house are up to date while the other one could be a month out of date. I'm not crazy about cloud storage; never know who is looking at it!!!

Then I ask myself how many copies do I need, when I was all paper I only had one copy, I did not make a second copy of much of anything and store it off site, I think we can take it too far sometimes. I'm more worried about my pictures than my bank and tax statements, when I add pictures that’s when I do the backup.

I have been using Robocopy for backing up all of pics, videos, finances, etc about a 1 gig today. Been using Robocopy for the last 8 years or so, works great. I like the fact it’s an exact copy with no compression and it’s fast. At the work place we run Robocopy 4 times a day for about 1.5TB of daily working drawings, still loving it. Matter of fact they adding Multithreading that I have yet to turn on.

If anybody would like a sample of the batch file that I use for Robocopy I would be glad to post it here. It’s a line command that is comes native with Windows that many don't seem to know about.

But do you do a test restore to verify that the back up is good and that you know how to restore the data? A backup is only as good as the ability to restore and the verification that the back up indeed exists. I worked at an engineering company that had a regular backup of a VAX cluster (this was a while ago). The back up routine always had system logs that indicated that the backup ran successfully. At one point, they went to check the tapes and found that despite the logs, the backups contained empty files. We had racks of tapes stored offsite that had nothing on them.

[Jay69]

And now that we have everything scanned we do have backups right? Perhaps a local backup on another hard drive, an offsite backup and finally an in the cloud backup.

and just as important. We do test restores to verify that the stuff is out there, right? Right?

I keep three copies, one on the HD, one in my fire box in the house, one in a fire box at either my mothers or my detached garage. The 2 drives in the house are up to date while the other one could be a month out of date. I'm not crazy about cloud storage; never know who is looking at it!!!

Then I ask myself how many copies do I need, when I was all paper I only had one copy, I did not make a second copy of much of anything and store it off site, I think we can take it too far sometimes. I'm more worried about my pictures than my bank and tax statements, when I add pictures that’s when I do the backup.

I have been using Robocopy for backing up all of pics, videos, finances, etc about a 1 gig today. Been using Robocopy for the last 8 years or so, works great. I like the fact it’s an exact copy with no compression and it’s fast. At the work place we run Robocopy 4 times a day for about 1.5TB of daily working drawings, still loving it. Matter of fact they adding Multithreading that I have yet to turn on.

If anybody would like a sample of the batch file that I use for Robocopy I would be glad to post it here. It’s a line command that is comes native with Windows that many don't seem to know about.

But do you do a test restore to verify that the back up is good and that you know how to restore the data? A backup is only as good as the ability to restore and the verification that the back up indeed exists. I worked at an engineering company that had a regular backup of a VAX cluster (this was a while ago). The back up routine always had system logs that indicated that the backup ran successfully. At one point, they went to check the tapes and found that despite the logs, the backups contained empty files. We had racks of tapes stored offsite that had nothing on them.

Yep, that’s the beauty of using Robocopy, you are not dependent upon on a restore program. I can take my USB drive plug it in any computer and see if my data is intact and yes I do check. You are somewhat I guess dependent on a program you need a working OS and know how to copy files, it’s the KISS program.

For larger amounts of files where you need a more robust backup routine this may not work well but I bet for 90% of the people it would be fine.
When I’m talking about backups here I’m looking at single files like PDF’s, JPEGS etc. it’s not going to restore a working OS. I could care less about the OS at this point.

But I do here what you are saying, when you look at the backup program that comes with Win7, I hate to admit this but it does work well. You have to wonder did it really backup, how our you going to know unless you do a restore. I think that the issue you are getting at.

I’m more anal with our work drawing files, two servers with raid (use Rsync between the two), backup to my computer (Robocopy), backup to USB drive (Robocopy) and an FTP site for good measure.

[stan1]

Fyi, lifehacker.com recently had a feature on using the Doxie scanner for this type of thing.

http://lifehacker.com/5973033/how-i-tur ... n-two-days

I've had a couple of scanners, and they just don't seem to let me do this type of thing quickly - especially when it comes to working with multiple page bills. I like this "staple" feature of the Doxie software; I may check out the Doxie.

I am skeptical of using Evernote for archiving. Works well today, but what happens in 5, 10, or 30 years when they are no longer around? There are billions of searchable PDF files sitting on Windows and Unix file systems operated by Fortune 500 companies and government -- so there will be a legacy migration path to whatever the future brings and there's a pretty good chance Adobe or someone else will offer a way to view PDFs for a long time to come. Evernote? Well, there's risk and the migration path, if one exists, might not be easy.

[lightheir]

+1 on the Fujitsu scansnap. I think it was about $250 when I bought it.

Honestly, if you don't have a sheet-feed scanner, you don't know what you're missing out on. It makes document scanning much easier, and makes the paperless archive system a reality. I went from 2 full file cabinets to zero. I now have a small folder with only the most essential documents like passport, etc. Everything else is digital. It's awesome.


THe scansnap will auto OCR your docs, but I have never needed it, so I prefer the faster scan speed without it. Very small portable footprint.

My Crashplan automatically backups everything, so there's very little risk of loss between my local copy, local backup, online cloud version, and Crashplan backup.

I had tried in the past to go all-digital without a sheet-feed scanner and just using a flatbed scanner and camera, but it was totally clunky. I don't think it's possible to really do it without a sheet feed scanner, honestly. With the Scansnap, I literally open mail, decide whether it's scanned or not, and then either instantly scanned and then trashed/shredded. I've been doing this for nearly 4 years now, and I've never had a single situation where I had needed the original document instead of the scanned one. (Obviously I keep the few things like passports, birth certificates, diplomas but they're very few.)

I'm actually using a 2nd Google account that's only used for document storage and only opened from my home computer as my cloud backup of the local copy, which is also password protected. The worry about having documents lost/stolen is actually significant because nowadays with how often we upgrade computers and hard drives, it's too easy to forget to wipe drives. Better to just keep it supersecure in the first place.

[Random Walker]

I totally agree that it is the SHEET FEED scanner that makes going paperless practical.

Dave

[Aptenodytes]

+1 on the Fujitsu scansnap. I think it was about $250 when I bought it.
[...]
THe scansnap will auto OCR your docs, but I have never needed it, so I prefer the faster scan speed without it. Very small portable footprint.

I agree that having scansnap OCR the documents on the fly is too slow, especially for long documents.

I have found searching to be indispensible, however.

What I now do is configure scansnap not to OCR the documents (VERY big improvement in speed).

I then batch-OCR the documents every month or so using Adobe-Pro. That takes a while, but I can do it when it is convenient for me, e.g. before going to bed at night.

I also immediately upload all scanned documents to Evernote (automatically), and Evernote by default OCRs all incoming documents in the background. The Evernote link doesn't affect the scanning speed in the slightest.

[sdrone]

I am skeptical of using Evernote for archiving.

So skip the Evernote step and just save them as PDFs on your drive.

[bagelhead]

How do you guys organize the files once they are scanned?

By date, topic, etc.?

PDF's in Folders?

[KarlJ]

I have not been previously scanning, but this thread has starting me thinking about scanning financial documents such as old trade confirmations before I run them through a shredder. My HP Officejet has a scanner with document feeding capability, so I was planning to transfer in mass document images to a USB thumb drive attached to the printer, and then convert the images to PDF with Acrobat software on a PC. I doubt the security of storing financial information on Google Drive, so I will probably store the PDFs locally, and hopefully have some kind of index scheme so that I be able to locate a particular document should the need arise without having to view all of them. Is anyone using this kind of setup for a large volume of documents?

[bertilak]

Is anyone using this kind of setup for a large volume of documents?

Not now, but years ago, when I filed hard copies in a big file cabinet, I created a little database where I assigned each document a number that was essentially the date plus a sequential number. I just filed them sequentially with month and year dividers. In my database I kept track of a bunch of info for each document: From, to, subject, project and any keywords I associated with the document. I could easily search the database and display a list of matching documents for any arbitrary search criteria. Not sure, but I think I had related tables to keep track of projects and people.

[Aptenodytes]

How do you guys organize the files once they are scanned?

By date, topic, etc.?

PDF's in Folders?

I try to make it as easy as possible so that there are few barriers to implementation.

1) Newly scanned documents pile up in a directory I call "incoming scans."

2) I then drag the files into one of three main folders:

a) Family things
b) Business Cards
c) Work stuff

I try to do this at the end of any one scanning session, because that's when it is easiest to remember which folder to drag things into.

3) I have a small number (3-4) of folders that contain collections of old things that I don't add to regularly, e.g. zillions of scanned journal articles. Separating these things that are large and mainly there as deep archives helps make the searching more efficient.

4) I want a small number of folders to keep the maintenance simple. But I don't want to dump everything into a single bucket, because it can be very helpful to limit a search. E.g. if I'm trying to hunt down notes from a conference I attended 5 years ago, it helps to keep the search within the work folder.

[Aptenodytes]

I will probably store the PDFs locally, and hopefully have some kind of index scheme so that I be able to locate a particular document should the need arise without having to view all of them. Is anyone using this kind of setup for a large volume of documents?

The file management systems that come bundled with the high-end scanners will probably work well for you.

[Toons]

How do you guys organize the files once they are scanned?

By date, topic, etc.?

PDF's in Folders?

I save as or drag all scanned files to folders/sub folders to external hard drive then copy them to identical folders to Google drive as a backup
Example folder and sub:Finances/taxes/brokerage statements/bank statements
Utilities/cable bills/electric/water
Autos/ford maintenance/Honda maintenance

[bUU]

+1 on the Fujitsu scansnap. I think it was about $250 when I bought it.

The best price I can find for it is $414!

[sdrone]

I use 1 folder per year.

IN each folder, docs are named "year vendorname month"

So, a document might be named "2012 tmobile december.pdf"

The folder sorts alphabetically, so if you're looking for a tmobile bill, they're all in a row.

If you wanna save space, since they're already in a directory "2012", just leave the near off the document name.

[stan1]

+1 on the Fujitsu scansnap. I think it was about $250 when I bought it.

The best price I can find for it is $414!

The S1300 is around $250 ($261 with Amazon Prime right now).
The S1500 is above $400. I'd be surprised if someone got a new S1500 for around $250 -- but maybe someone got lucky.

[TF Hutch]

I am confused, I use a Mac with OSX 10.8 (Mountain Lion). Apparently it has built in OCR, can I use any scanner regardless of softwear included?