Document scanning for home - software recommendations

Lum

I am planning to start scanning and shredding correspondence such as bills and suchlike, and only store the important ones like insurance certificates and driving licences.

I already have a nice double sided scanner with a document feeder, it comes with TWAIN and ISIS drivers, but need some suitable software, preferably free, the software I am used to (that I have to provide support for in my day job) costs thousands of pounds, so obviously I won't be using that!

Does anyone else do this and if so what software do you use?

Lum

The scanner does not come with any software beyond drivers as it's intended for professional use with commercial software.

Actually making scans isn't the issue, I was looking for some software that provides storage, indexing, search etc. rather than just ending up with a folder full of PDFs on my fileserver.

billywhizz

Hi I do exactly this, to the point of scanning everything, kids newsletters from school, utility bills, bank statements, invoices for work on the house etc etc.

I use Paperport, it scans the docs from it's own software and is much quicker than using the software with the scanner, but also has a very very good OCR function so you can search all the text in the docs you scan.

i love using it, and love not having piles of paperwork everywhere too!

it's not free though....
http://www.nuance.com/for-business/by-product/paperport/standard/index.htm

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005CA4XT2/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=103612307&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B002OEBHKM&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=1HKY1FWP1JNEH3HVWWF2

Lum

That's the kind of thing I'm after, and $99 is a lot more reasonable than the 4-5 figure sums for the software I deal with in my day job. Thanks.

Still open to other suggestions though, especially free ones

PaulyB71

Have you tried Evernote? I use it all the time.

Find it at https://www.evernote.com

Lum

Does that work with a scanner? The website would imply that it does not.


Edit: My GF doesn't want to spend any money on this, so Paperport is out. Anyone used this one? http://www.m-files.com/eng/express_free.asp

PaulyB71

I just scan to pdf outside of evernote and then use it to index and tag. Also great for tagging e-mails, etc straight into it.
You can create an auto-import folder which will automatically index any pdf's you place in there

Sooler

Just scan to PDF and name them 'yyyymmdd whatever.pdf' and store in a folder structure on external drive, plus backup of course.

PaulyB71

But the good thing you can do with Evernote is tag your documents with as many words as you like and then do a 1 click search on the tags. Makes filing an absolute doddle.

tocsin

There was a document management system advertised for my old home server - Digital Archound, ISTR. (I just use OCR'd PDFs in a suitable folder structure).