Sending attachments

cookie365

Definitely scan to the cloud, much more secure than email too. And depending on the service you may be able to get usage information on who's accessing the documents.

GAILEY

Gosh ...thank you so much for all the replies...I have a lot to think about I see.
My new scanner hasn't come yet - I am expecting it in the next day or so and it is a fujitsu scansnap ix500 - from what you are saying CountryGoose I might be jumping the gun because I might have the options to reduce size etc on the scanner itself ? My existing scanner is an HP flatbed and its hopeless because I have to do everything page by page and I am talking 50-80 pages at a time, albeit black on white text documents only...confidential documents for my clients and instructions for professionals - my internet speed at home is shocking (under 54 mpbs).
I think I may wait to see if the new scanner solves the size issue and if not will investigate further the cloudy thing (I know my firm has a dropbox account but I don't think we have ever used it...and |I certainly don't know how to but can learn!)
Thanks again for all the very helpful advice

cookie365

The software on many scanners these days can integrate directly with cloud services, so it may be easier than you think.

And if you need help figuring out a process, the Dropbox forums are quite friendly and helpful.

https://forums.dropbox.com/

GunJack

GAILEY wrote: »

my internet speed at home is shocking (under 54 mpbs).

that'll be the speed your wifi is connecting laptop/pad/whatever to your router, to check your bb speed run a speedtest here:-

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest.html

WTFH

Oh, and if your internet speed was 54Mb/s, you would have well above average internet speed.
According to Ofcom, the average UK residential speed in May this year was 14.7Mb/s, so 54Mb/s is most definitely not shocking - although as GunJack says, I suspect you're talking about wifi speed in your house, not your broadband speed.

http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2013/08/07/average-uk-broadband-speed-continues-to-rise/

macman

Wish I could get 54MBps...
OP, email was never designed for transferring large files around. The file size you can send is limited by both your own ISP and that of the recipient. So if your ISP's limit is 30MB and the recipient's is 10MB, then 10MB is the max. Much better to use an FTP service if you need to do this regularly.

googler

GAILEY wrote: »

My existing scanner is an HP flatbed and its hopeless because I have to do everything page by page and I am talking 50-80 pages at a time, albeit black on white text documents only...confidential documents for my clients and instructions for professionals - my internet speed at home is shocking (under 54 mpbs).

Scan them into an OCR program and save them as plain text (*.txt), not as PDFs, then...... you can see how much space you'll save by pasting the content of one of your pages into Notepad, saving it as a text file, and looking at the file size - you can then compare this to a PDF that you made from the same page.

So, have I got this right? You type up plain text, save it on your PC, print it out, scan it as a PDF, then send it to others as attachments? Can't you just save the original text as a *.txt or word file, and send that to your clients?

WTFH

I'm guessing there's signatures on the documents and they want to be sent in a way that they are not (too) easy to edit.

Some of the companies I work with would just upload the file to a secure website, then give me access to download it.
I then download it, read through it, print off and sign the page that requires a signature, then reply by email saying I am happy and enclosing a scan of the page with my signature on it.

For scanning purposes, I use my iPhone, then when I open the jpg, I just save it down to 1024x768 using Windows Live Photo Gallery. The file shrinks from 2-3MB down to below 400kB.

GAILEY

The speed of my broadband if, I am afraid, about as shocking as my knowledge of the terminology:rotfl:
The speed is under 1 I know for certain (which is why when I pressed the little icon on my computer that said speed I assumed it was 54 ...which I assumed was actually .54 ...just proves you should never assume;))
The scans I will be sending are of reports, statements etc rather than of documents that I have prepared myself (which I'd just send as a word doc), and I do need an element of security so I think the dropbox/cloud option might be the one for me.
....I was hoping that it would have arrived today but it is not to be...I'm looking forward to trying all the options you suggest...and having a good old play:j

tronator

GAILEY wrote: »

The speed of my broadband if, I am afraid, about as shocking as my knowledge of the terminology:rotfl:
The speed is under 1 I know for certain (which is why when I pressed the little icon on my computer that said speed I assumed it was 54 ...which I assumed was actually .54 ...just proves you should never assume;))
The scans I will be sending are of reports, statements etc rather than of documents that I have prepared myself (which I'd just send as a word doc), and I do need an element of security so I think the dropbox/cloud option might be the one for me.
....I was hoping that it would have arrived today but it is not to be...I'm looking forward to trying all the options you suggest...and having a good old play:j

What you see is the speed of your wireless connection between your laptop and your router. And it's most likely 54MBit/s. If you want to know your broadband connection, log in into your router's configuration page or go to https://www.speedtest.net und run the test. Don't make other downloads at the same time, otherwise your test results won't be correct.