16 Jan 2010

Setting Up ScanSnap to Scan Directly Into Evernote, time and get organized by setting up Sca. I use my Scansnap S1300 to scan documents into PDF's into Evernote both with and without adding OCR. The advantage of adding OCR are evident but for large piles of paper it takes quite some extra time. Often, I doubt whether I really need OCR for a particular document.

For some time now Fujitsu ScanSnap has been a well publicised way to get your scans into Evernote with aminimum of fuss. I don’t have a Fujitsu scanner, but I did have adesire to get my an all-in-one print/scan/fax unit to fit into some sortof scan to Evernote work flow. Thankfully itwas surprisingly easy.

Every scanning device these days comes with some sort of scan managersoftware which will let you quickly set-up profiles to scan items of aparticular size, resolution, etc. They typically also allow you to setdetails about the output format including the file type, file namingconvention and destination.

ScanSnap is effectively a scan manager that does just this only ratherthan a destination folder you pass it a destination application. Iguess the reason this works is because if you run the Evernoteexecutable (on Windows at least), with a file path as the firstparameter it will try and create a note out of the file.

My typical scanning profile is for A5 sheets from my notebook/file andsince my all-in-one unit has a sheet feeder this is really easy toscan. I did however spend some time getting the resolution and contrastsettings right to keep the file size down but the content legible. Because I mostly scan hand written notes I scan to JPEG as Evernote willscan the images and try to recognise the text content (OCR).

If for some reason you don’t have a scan manager for your scanner(maybe you inherited it?) MetaDMS looks like it has a freeware scan manager that might do thejob. I haven’t tried it myself, but leave a comment if you find it does(or doesn’t) do the job with your scanner.

Once you have your scan profile set-up and you have specified an outputdirectory, you need to configure your Evernote to watch this outputfolder.

In the Windows 3.5 Beta theoption to add a watched folder is available as an item called “Importfolders…” under the “Tools” menu. In the Windows 3.1version it is available on the “File Import Tab” that is available fromthe “Account Properties” menu item under the “Tools” menu. Just add thefolder and decide if you want the file to be removed after import intoEvernote.

Unlike ScanSnap which I believe will import directly into the defaultnotebook, setting a watch folder allows you to choose which notebook toimport into. I specifically created a local notebook on the PC whichthe scanner is attached to. This ensures that I can control the flow ofscans into my cloud sync’d notebooks and that if I’m approaching mymonthly limit I can just push up the most essential scans and save theothers for re-filing next month. It also means that the inevitable scanerrors (usually a double feed on my sheet feeder for me) can becorrected without wasting any upload allowance.

I can think of one notable advantage for ScanSnap in that even ifEvernote is not open it will still add it into the default Evernotedatabase. However if you’re an Evernote user why wouldn’t you haveEvernote open and overall I think the option to save to a notebook ofchoice (including local) suggests that watched folders would give abetter scan to Evernote work flow.

Remember too that you could duplicate profile settings but change thedestination folder and have multiple watched folders to make life eveneasier. You might want one profile to scan to a work notebook andanother to scan to a personal notebook that you manage by using twodifferent, watched, output folders for the scans.

So make use of that scanner and get your notes into Evernote so you candeclutter your desk in 2010.

Scansnap To Evernote

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Scansnap To Evernote Setup

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