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Scanning documents

N

n0id

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 11, 2008
38
0
So i got this hair-brained idea the other day.

I wanted to make a media server (mac mini + external drives shared out to my other machines. Mac mini hooked up to tv.)

Then i thought...well i might as well use it as my data server as well. So...id like to find a program (free is good, but cheap is ok =P ) that i can use a scanner, scan in receipts, documents, taxes, etc... and store them so i can go paperless. The app must have a folder structure so i can organize them by year/month/item. I could do this manually, but i figure an app would be more useful :)

Any mac apps available? I'm a recent switcher (3 months ago) so i havent been able to find anything yet with my searches.

Thanks!
 
You mean like iPhoto ?

What scanner do you have ?
Does it have a document feeder ?
Do you need OCR at all (to make documents searchable), or will you be happy with hundreds of JPEGs / TIFFs ?

The scanner manufacturers software can be of variable quality, depending on who the manufacturer is. Epson software used to be quite good, Canon software is just plain awful.

Do you have any database software ? FileMaker ? Bento ?
Are you handy with MySQL ? and PHP ?
With these you could build your own web front end to your document database / folder hierarchy.

Maybe too many questions, but the first one is the most important, something like iPhoto ? an image metadata database ?
 
If you decide on PDFs for the OCR benefits (I bought a cheap Canon LiDE scanner for this purpose, and I generally scan statements and things as PDF so I can keyword search them, although the OCR isn't perfect), then you might find this app useful:

Yep is a PDF organizing program that works conceptually similarly to iPhoto.

yep3panel.jpg


http://www.ironicsoftware.com/yep/index.html
 
BertyBoy said:
You mean like iPhoto ?

What scanner do you have ?
Does it have a document feeder ?
Do you need OCR at all (to make documents searchable), or will you be happy with hundreds of JPEGs / TIFFs ?

The scanner manufacturers software can be of variable quality, depending on who the manufacturer is. Epson software used to be quite good, Canon software is just plain awful.

Do you have any database software ? FileMaker ? Bento ?
Are you handy with MySQL ? and PHP ?
With these you could build your own web front end to your document database / folder hierarchy.

Maybe too many questions, but the first one is the most important, something like iPhoto ? an image metadata database ?
Click to expand...

Wow that is alot of questions :) As i said, at the moment it was just an idea to see what i would need to get started. I had originally thought of doing the jpg/tiff route, and manually manage the folder structure. For example, a folder structure of "2009/January/Week1/<name of folder here>/item...where name of folder would organize the types..such as reciepts, work documents, bills, etc..

I had not thought about using OCR so i can search for them!

I do not have any database experience, but i could learn easily enough. I have several database admins at work that i can sponge info from to get started. This would probably be an easy project for them to help me through.

Lastly, i had not bought a scanner as of yet...so i'm up for suggestions :)

Thanks for all the ideas and info so far!
 
Get yourself a Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M and YEP. The ScanSnap is an awesome document/receipt scanner and the YEP software is wonderful for organizing the searchable PDF files created by the ScanSnap.

Good luck with whatever route you take,
Jason
 
Yeah, the homebrew database route is only going to be of benefit if you don't find a suitable app for the documents, but Yep looks very good indeed.

Placing the scans into the folder hierarchy is all manual effort, but my old Epson software was great for that, I used it for the many thousands of company receipts over many years. But now I have a new Canpn (kept the old Epson too - from 1998) and the included software is awful. I suspect that most manufacturers are cutting costs like this.

OCR is up to you, but maybe all you want is to be able to meta-tag each scan with a title and a few keywords, ie. date, sender / recipient, type (letter, bill, receipt, form, etc.) and some sort of grouping (personal, financial, home / utilities, work, legal, etc).

I'm going to look at Yep now ...
 
i'm trying to do somthing similar...

i just would like to create a database of my files (which are doc, pdf, rtf, mpe, wav)... now everything is in finder way, with folders and subfolders, something as 15GB of datas...

i tried Bento, but it doesn't use the alias system of macosx... if i add a file and then i move it in finder, bento dosesn't "follow" it... broken link is the result...

i liked Leap, but it' smore a powerful finder, than a database of documents...

Yep is just for pdf...

is there a solution for me different from the old dear finder? :)
 
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