At my last job, I used a pc program called Docuworks (bundled with our Xerox machine) that allowed you to modify scanned documents (combine pages/documents, highlight passages, add comments, print to PDF, etc.). Is there anything like this available for personal use on a Mac?
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Document Management Software
- Thread starter hkriffraff
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You also might want to try the built-in Preview. In Leopard, it's got a lot of pretty nifty and easy to use features.
Yup There Is...
Presto! PageManger for Macintosh:
http://www.newsoftinc.com/products/product-main.asp?productid=NAI0043
Also See Paperless by Mariner:
http://www.marinersoftware.com/sitepage.php?page=152
Also see Neat Works for mac:
http://store.neatco.com/index/page/product/product_id/35/product_name/NeatWorks+for+Mac+2.0+(CD)
Please note that Neat Works can also come bundled with paper/receipt scanner for the Mac.
Also see DevonThink:
http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/devonthink/index.html
Presto! PageManger for Macintosh:
http://www.newsoftinc.com/products/product-main.asp?productid=NAI0043
Also See Paperless by Mariner:
http://www.marinersoftware.com/sitepage.php?page=152
Also see Neat Works for mac:
http://store.neatco.com/index/page/product/product_id/35/product_name/NeatWorks+for+Mac+2.0+(CD)
Please note that Neat Works can also come bundled with paper/receipt scanner for the Mac.
Also see DevonThink:
http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/devonthink/index.html
Continuing this thread a year later...
Does anyone know which of these (or other) apps have good versioning control?
I tried iDocuments, which seems fine - if a little simplistic, but the phrase "version control" appears nowhere in their documentation.
Does anyone know which of these (or other) apps have good versioning control?
I tried iDocuments, which seems fine - if a little simplistic, but the phrase "version control" appears nowhere in their documentation.
Bringing an old thread back to life.
I'm looking to scan in all the documents we have stashed in several boxes in the garage and office. I want to avoid having to name every document I scan.
Ideally I'd be able to setup a smartfolder which can search the contents of the documents. For example, I could setup a smartfolder called "CHASE". Then it would automatically show all my Chase Bank statements in that smartfolder.
I noticed in iDocument that you can search by content in the document library, but you cannot create any smartrules or smartfolders based on document content.
Can someone please tell me if I'm incorrect, or if another software application can meet my requirements?
Thanks in advance.
I'm looking to scan in all the documents we have stashed in several boxes in the garage and office. I want to avoid having to name every document I scan.
Ideally I'd be able to setup a smartfolder which can search the contents of the documents. For example, I could setup a smartfolder called "CHASE". Then it would automatically show all my Chase Bank statements in that smartfolder.
I noticed in iDocument that you can search by content in the document library, but you cannot create any smartrules or smartfolders based on document content.
Can someone please tell me if I'm incorrect, or if another software application can meet my requirements?
Thanks in advance.
Check out DEVONthink Pro Office. Amazing app.
http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/devonthink/devonthink-pro-office.html
http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/devonthink-2
Is this really working? I've been searching for some software about my documents...
I use DevonThink Pro Office. By reputation, it is the strongest solution and it has been working great for me. Just this week, my wife and I scanned about 3000 documents. My sheet scanner was working non-stop and my i7 iMac was busy doing OCR.
It is amazing how well the search function works... my entire database is primarily PDF+Text files after scanning, and I can search for anything and the list instantly appears along with relevance bars. I used this feature to "file" the 3000 documents into folders. I would click a document (ex: credit card receipt... then search for the account number and all of the scans would appear. I'd select them all and then drag them into a folder for that particular item. It took very little time to file everything away.
The search function is actually so good that I am not sure it is even necessary to file things. You could just leave everything in a heap and search.
/Jim
Thanks for the feedback Jim. I am wondering how much the Pro Office version is worth it over the Personal, and what features outside of direct scanning and OCR it adds. I don't care for the Neat or Paperless UIs, in my opinion too clunky, and I haven't heard the greatest stuff about them. So it really came down to iDocument or DevonThink. Each at $50 unless I look at DevonThink Pro Office. I like that each has an iOS version too. DevonThink certainly looks a bit more robust.
I read that instead of relying on Paperless, Neat, or Devon Pro Office for OCR for receipts, etc. is to use PDFPen to import and do the OCR work and then dump into DevonThink or iDocument. I wonder if that would eliminate the need for the Pro Office version? Or what other features it has.
DEVONthink Pro is an intermediate version between Pro Office and Personal. Here is a link to comparisons. The difference between Pro Office and Pro amounts to OCR, email archiving, and the ability to create a web server. The differences between Pro Office and Personal are greater as you can see on the comparison page. One great thing about DT is that you can upgrade from one version to another later and pay what essentially amounts to the difference in the prices between the versions.
The advantage of Pro Office is the automation of the workflow. Scanned documents are sent directly to DT Pro Office where they are OCRed and filed with little intervention on your part.
The advantage of Pro Office is the automation of the workflow. Scanned documents are sent directly to DT Pro Office where they are OCRed and filed with little intervention on your part.
If all you want is to scan to pdfs or do light OCR also checkout Vuescan - simply the best scanning software available for the Mac; great support by the developer and reasonably priced.
www.hamrick.com/
I also use DevonThink pro Office and like it; but if all you need to do is scan and OCR Vuescan is a decent choice.
Thanks for the info. What I really want is to go 95% paperless and have everything from receipts to PDF manuals to important docs and tax files scanned and digitally filed. At first I wasn't as keen on DevonThink but I see it is probably more robust than iDocument. I don't want to just OCR and PDF to spotlight search my own folders. I like the power of a catalog. I just didn't know if DT Pro Office or DT Personal + PDFPen for scanning and OCR was better. Right now MacUpdate has a bundle incl. PDFPen and VMFusion for $50. DT Personal is $50, and if I ever want to upgrade to Pro later they will charge me the difference. But after seeing things, Paperless and Neat just don't appear all that great. However, what I don't know is if DT will also pull and create fields for amounts and dates on specific things like receipts and likewise contact info stuff on business cards like Paperless and Neat do.
Thanks again for the feedback.
As steveoc mentioned, the beauty of DTPO is that it completely automates the work flow. I mentioned earlier that my wife and I scanned about 3000 pages this week. I was pumping the documents into the Fujitsu ScanSnap is fast as I could pick up the pages and the scanner was zipping them through and scanning both sides at 3 seconds per page. My wife was operating the heavy duty shredder and she could not keep up with the paper I was generating!!! The OCR could not keep up with the scanning either... but that is inconsequential. My i7 processor was able to catch up within a few hours, and everything was neatly placed into DevonThink all without any human intervention. Once everything was in DT, I used search functions to grab collections of scanned documents and I was able to file all the new work into their proper folders.
I agree that Vuescan is a spectacular program! However, it is a scanning program, and the OP is looking for Document Management Software (per the title of this thread).
Speaking of Vuescan... We are using it in a very prolonged project of scanning over three decades of photo negatives and slides (10's of thousands). We are using a Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED scanner which gives fantastic results... but it takes about 4-5 minutes per 4 image film strip. We have been doing this intermittently for the past 2-3 years, and we are about 1/2 done with the project. We changed from the Nikon SW to VueScan in December '09 and it is considerably better than Nikon's SW. The good news is that we are reaching the end of the negatives... and once we start the slide scanning... the feeder processes 50 at a time, so it should go MUCH faster. Finally... we have boxes full of prints with no negatives or unscannable negatives (C110 negatives)... and for those we will just use the ScanSnap sheet scanner to directly scan prints. Of course, scanning prints is nowhere near the quality of scanning negatives... but you can scan a full set of prints (24 or 36 exposure) in just a few seconds with the ScanSnap. I finally feel like this project will end!!!
/Jim
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I feel your pain - I'm also using VueScan and an ED5000 to scan 20 years of negatives. Hey, at least we aren't using a drum scanner...
I thought DTPO would be my answer and it may be, however, so far I have found in using the demo:
1. It doesn't seem to auto straighten or auto crop and I had a hard time even manually adjusting the image size in the scan window. Now I am currently only using a Canon Pixma MP530 which does have a flatbed and doc feeder, and realize for speed I will need a Fujitsu S1300 or S1500M.
2. I haven't gotten far enough to use the Auto Classify feature, but one thing about Paperless or Neat that I do like (their UI is horrid and unpolished compared to DTPO) is that you can tell it a scan is of type - receipt, contact, manual, etc. And for each type it populates certain fields automatically from the OCR data and rather than being purely searchable.
3. I scanned a Costco receipt and they put their receipts with the total in a black box/white letter reversed, so the OCR picked up all the individual amounts but not the total. But I didn't see a way to annotate the scan with other info. Especially since I want the date to be the receipt date and not the scan date.
I personally don't want to use a separate scan and OCR solution and then dump to DTPO, but I want it to work for what I need. I really dislike the idea of going with Neat or Paperless as I think they can't really handle longterm database volume and their UIs are unpolished, but their inherent ability to pull data and delineate doc types is a plus.
Roland,
Here are my best answers to your questions:
1. The auto straighten is a function of my ScanSnap S1500M. I also have a MFP with a flatbed and feeder. That does not have the auto straighten function. S1500M will auto rotate if you insert the pages upside down... or even if every other page is upside down, etc. It will also remove blank pages, scan full duplex, auto-crop, etc. It does it all at blazing speed.
2. I have never used the AI features before (such as auto classify), but your post prompted me to try it. It is really quite amazing. I just scanned my corporate Amex bill. I selected it in the inbox, and opened the Classify sidebar. It showed me a sorted list of "matches" by relevance, with my corporate Amex folder at the very top and pre-selected. Below that was a list of "next best" matches. The second best match was my personal (vs corporate) AMEX bill. This one, as well as the matches further down had much shorter relevance bars. I simply left the default (correct) cloice highlighted, and hit the "move to" button and it was filed away. Thanks for forcing me to look up this function!
3. I also have a bunch of Costco receipts scanned, and confirmed that my "reverse image" totals do NOT OCR match. Honestly, I am not sure that I really care. I just did a bunch of random searches such as "costco television", "costco hp", "costco Nikon" and every one of them instantly listed the correct receipt at the top of the search window with the longest relevance bar.
You can annotate the receipt using the DTPO editor, but I never do that. Search is so easy that I do not spend a lot of time trying to over classify things. Maybe my needs are just modest.
I hope that helps.
/Jim
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Well I actually went ahead and ordered a S1500M from Costco yesterday. And will plan on using that with DT Personal or DTPO. I have the demo of DTPO downloaded, just not sure with the scanning ability and OCR of the Fujitsu, that I will need the extra features of DTPO over the Personal.
My understanding is that your workflow is to use the Fujitsu software to scan. Which allows for all the orientation, straightening and cropping. Then to use Adobe? to do the OCR in batches. And then import everything into DevonThink when it is done...
Let me know if I am missing anything there. I did read that ClearScan - which I believe is the Adobe OCR portion, stopped working for people with OS X 10.7.2 or so. And as it is I am on 10.7.3 the most current version. Not sure if that will be an issue.
Roland,
It is much simpler than this. When you have a S1500M and DTPO, You simply push the blue button on the scanner and your documents get scanned full duplex. During that process... Fujitsu straightens, flips, crops, removes blank pages, etc all instantly. Then it hands the document to DTPO automatically and one of two things get done automatically:
- OCR OFF: The document goes into the DTPO inbox immediately
- OCR ON: DTPO performs the OCR, converts the file to PDF+Text, and then after a brief delay (depending on the complexity of the OCR and size of the doc) puts it into the DTPO Inbox.
Either way... it is a single button push on your S1500M to scan your documents and get them inserted into DTPO.
The attachment below is the OCR screen in DTPO preferences.
I suspect that you are going to love the S1500M.
/Jim
Attachments
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Jim,
Thanks for all the info/feedback. I think I will certainly be happy with the Scansnap. Even more now knowing how automated/simple the system should be. I do not have as much as you and others it seems to scan, so I probably won't be working that horse as hard as it can go, but I think it will still simplify things for me. So thanks again.
Similar issue
Hi all,
I am new to this forum, but this discussion was of interest as I am looking for a similar solution. I have an HP2840 all-in-on printer, scanner, fax with ADF and duplex scanning. However, I just upgraded to Lion and now I discovere that HP don't support Lion for this model! So I'm looking for a solution and possibly therefore need a new piece of kit and relevant software. I want to produce a paperless office - but mainly need to scan A4 double sided documents and save as PDF for accounts purposes. Any ideas on what is best? Thank you
Hi all,
I am new to this forum, but this discussion was of interest as I am looking for a similar solution. I have an HP2840 all-in-on printer, scanner, fax with ADF and duplex scanning. However, I just upgraded to Lion and now I discovere that HP don't support Lion for this model! So I'm looking for a solution and possibly therefore need a new piece of kit and relevant software. I want to produce a paperless office - but mainly need to scan A4 double sided documents and save as PDF for accounts purposes. Any ideas on what is best? Thank you
Jumping in here late to the game: @Jim: thanks for your comments about film scanning. I too had (still have) boxes of 35mm slides and negatives that needed scanning. I didn't check into VueScan at the time i started the project back in 2007 but what I ended up getting was an Epson Perfection 4990 mainly because it had a FireWire port, which at the time, was the fastest. It still is pretty speedy and it will handle 16 35mm negs at a time (they seem to have come from the old photo stores in strips of four).
Mac document manager software comparison?
I've been trying out a variety of DMs over the past few weeks. Let me state up front that I've been using DTPO for several years to handle some research projects, which is its forte. Unfortunately it appears to be overkill for my particular DM needs, though reading through some of the replies above (particularly from flynz4), I may have to reexamine this option.
I've tried Yojimbo, Yep, and EagleFiler, and have settled on either iDocument or Together. At this point I just can't make up my mind. The thing these two have over the others is that, like DTPO, I can index files rather than directly import them. This is important to me as I have limited space on my boot drive, an SSD, and I have documents scattered over the boot drive and a couple of external drives. Importing all the files into a DM's database would overwhelm my SSD, not to mention disrupting my current Finder filing system.
So I'd like to know if anyone here has used either/both and what specific advantages or disadvantages these have.
Scanning files isn't necessary in my case as I can always fall back on the Fujitsu.
Thanks in advance!
-Tod
I've been trying out a variety of DMs over the past few weeks. Let me state up front that I've been using DTPO for several years to handle some research projects, which is its forte. Unfortunately it appears to be overkill for my particular DM needs, though reading through some of the replies above (particularly from flynz4), I may have to reexamine this option.
I've tried Yojimbo, Yep, and EagleFiler, and have settled on either iDocument or Together. At this point I just can't make up my mind. The thing these two have over the others is that, like DTPO, I can index files rather than directly import them. This is important to me as I have limited space on my boot drive, an SSD, and I have documents scattered over the boot drive and a couple of external drives. Importing all the files into a DM's database would overwhelm my SSD, not to mention disrupting my current Finder filing system.
So I'd like to know if anyone here has used either/both and what specific advantages or disadvantages these have.
Scanning files isn't necessary in my case as I can always fall back on the Fujitsu.
Thanks in advance!
-Tod