MPU 085: Paperless

MPU Logo David and Katie talk about David’s Paperless book and the best tools and software to go paperless with your Mac and iOS devices.

Please support our exclusive sponsor for this episode: Chrometa:

Chrometa
Track your time without notes or timers!

Links of note

David’s Paperless Field Guide
David’s Article about the new book
ScanSnap
NeatScanner
Doxie Go
Scanner Pro
JotNot
Hazel
David’s Print to PDF Post
Evernote
MPU Evernote Show
PDFpen
GoodReader
PDF Expert
Adobe Acrobat X Pro
PDFpen for iPad
PDF Expert
Arrsync

Play

44 thoughts on “MPU 085: Paperless

  1. Michel Williams

    Great podcast. David, I bought your Paperless book as soon as you mentioned it on Macsparky. I’m halfway through it and it’s pretty awesome. Can’t wait to see what other book you come up with next.

    I recently found Social Folder, a web service that help to easily get images and pdfs from Evernote, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

    http://socialfolders.me/

  2. John

    Liked the paperless show. Some good ideas were mentioned.

    I purchased the Neat Receipts for Mac scanner awhile back, but didn’t like it. Software wasn’t super great. So I sold it on ebay.

    Photos or other things smaller than 8.5×11 would pull through crooked.

    I’ll have to try a ScanSnap next.

  3. Andrew

    Hi

    I love the podcast..keep up the good work

    It is interesting to see your workflows. For me Devonthink is essential. Using a scansnap I can scan in documents that automatically are OCR’d and automatically go into Devonthink. There are multiple ways of capturing email,web items, print items etc.

    Devonthink has awesome search capabilities. It indexes the OCR’d text and you can search using that. I now have 2 databases one for work, one for home each of which is 10G in size. However searching for any document is simple, and easy and really quick. There is a bit of learning curve to the software but one you get it it becomes absolutely essential.

    Katie and Dave..you need to do a show on Devonthink.

  4. Ray

    Just listened to the show. One of the better ones. Would love to see some examples of David’s Hazel rules he spoke about. I did see that Katie posted an example of her ATT rule on her blog. Quite helpful in learning how to better make use of Hazel. I have purchased the iBook and look forward to reading it and watching the videos. My suggestion for your next book is on on Hazel…..

  5. Tracy Grabman

    Really glad you did another paperless show. Need to work on this I have purchased both the scan snap and the neat receipt scanner haven’t used either yet but hopefully after reading David’s book.

    On another note to you touched on in the podcast have either of you ever found a really good app for tracking business expenses including mileage?

  6. Josh Moore

    Great show, going paperless is something I have tried but never been able to hold to. Maybe with some of these tips I can get a flow that I can keep up. While I was listening two it I thought of 2 things I would like to share.

    1) I use evernote and the biggest reason is that it includes Chinese OCR. I live in Taiwan so having chinese OCR in my workflow is a must and I have not found a good solution outside of evernote (or at least one that does not cause me several hundred dollars).

    2) When it comes to encryption does anybody have thoughts on GPGTools (http://www.gpgtools.org/)? I like it because it creates a service so I can simply right click on any file, go to the services menue and click encrypt and the file is encrypted.

    Once again thanks for the great show!

  7. Michael H. Gerloff

    Listening to the interesting show I had to stop when it came to the name convention. After some fresh and annoying upload experience with a (linux) server I will stick to my rule: no special characters in a file name, not even a period.

    I know that most of the time it works with dates like “abc-2012.05.16.pdf”. But I do not want to risk any server hickup. So it is “abc-20120516.pdf” for me (I admit that the hyphen could be called a special char. – but I am only human :-) ).

    And, of course, David’s book was bought the very moment he mentioned it.

    1. Rick

      Yes, I second that periods are risky, at least on systems where languages other than English are likely to be used.

  8. Vladimir Campos

    Guys, I love your show: the tips, interviews and so on. But listening the episode 85 I guess you are missing the point of Evernote. You are complaining of things that are not real.

    First of all, I understand the idea of keeping everything on a folder structure to make it universal, but Evernote is not proprietary. All the files are saved in their original format and since you have everything stored on the App on your Mac, even if Evernote disappears, you’ll still be able to drag and drop everything out of it (including PDFs!). And even if the App crashes after the company disappears, everything is in the file structure of your Mac. It has its own way to file things like iPhoto and iTunes, for example, but the files are all in their original format on your HD. So there is no risk of losing data.

    Like David said, this file naming stuff is too geeky :-)

    Guys, listening to you talk I’d say it even looks like you are still using Windows or DOS! I remember renaming and storing on folders all my documents and pictures manually on the old days when I use to use Windows. Years ago when I started using Mac and iPhoto (I started with Panther on a G4), I understood how nice is not having to deal with this file system thing. I started enjoying my pictures because iPhoto started taking care of organizing them for me. This is what Evernote does with all kinds of documents.

    With Evernote, you don’t even need to rename anything. Or even put dates! It orders everything chronologically by the creation date (but if you need you can change the date). So all you need is a Notebook and Stack structure mimicking you present file structure and you are good to go.

    I’m a Premium user but I don’t even convert anything to PDF. Evernote does a good job reading text on JPG. And it makes my workflow easier. I only keep in PDF the files I might need to email people. And just do this because this makes things easier on the recipient end.

    Like Katie mentioned, Evernote makes it super easy to send documents. And I’d say more. If you have a giant file that you have to send, it sends it from Evernote server and not from your iOS device. This is very cool. It’s fast and doesn’t consume a lot of data from you data plan.

    And finally, like I mention before, a file structure is so Windows! You cannot see the documents and it’s also very hard to search (even with Spotlight). For example, I have my kids drawings, old paper and hand written letters I received from friends and family, picture of things I constantly need t buy for the house and so on a “Personal” Stack that I´m always looking and remembering things. And all this is super-easy to find in so many ways: searching, tagging or even visually surfing on the stacks/notebooks structure.

    In my opinion you should give a real chance do Evernote. But look at it as a Mac App. The kind of App that takes care of every technical issue and let you enjoy the experience ;-)

    1. Kevin Taylor

      I agree that Evernote is great. But you would lose your metadata (tags, notebooks) with the data salvage (exporting, finding in the Finder) you are advocating.

  9. Jim Davis

    There is an app that bridges between the evernote v. nested folders camps: Eagle Filer (http://c-command.com/eaglefiler/features). It creates regular folder and indexes the contents, will use open meta tags, and other stuff.

    Here are a few of compelling features:

    1. EF imports many file types in their native format. It does not convert them. You can maintain nested folders in EF. Once they are created in EF, they are regular folder viewable in Finder. You can use Finder to add more folders if you wish. EF will re-scan all folders in its tree and update its index of all files added using Finder.

    2. One can use EF to add more files –or– just save files to the folders that EF is watching/managing. Once the EF library is created, its folders are like any others.

    3. This is cool: if you put an EF library in dropbox, then EF will manage all the files and they are accessible from any device with dropbox. For example, if I scan a receipt into a “receipts” folder in EF stored in dropbox, then if I am away from office and need to see that receipt, I take out my iPhone, open dropbox, navigate to the EF folder and drill down to the receipts folder and look at the pdf.

    I don’t work for Eagle Filer. This app does a lot of cool stuff. It’s developed by the same guy as Spam Sieve.

    Thanks,
    Jim

  10. Rick

    The book sounds great. Do you know whether and when it will become available on the Japan iBooks store?

  11. Rick

    While I’m here, you might want to correct a typo (“divinug”) on the book description in the iTunes store:

    “2. Paperless Overview
    Get an idea for the big picture before divinug into the nitty-gritty.”

  12. Brian

    There was some discussion on the podcast about Evernote and getting your PDF’s out of the app. There is a brand new feature in Evernote that allows you to save all the attachments for a group of notes into a specified folder on your computer. Now you could get everything back out of Evernote by selecting all notes and then clicking on the “Save Attachments” button.

    Very nice feature.

  13. Dave

    I am using Lion on a MacBook Pro and cannot figure out how to do create the print to pdf routine that is described above. There is no Keyboard & Mouse System Preference pane and the Keyboard pane does not have a “+” to allow me to build my own… I feel pretty dumb, but I just cannot figure it out. Any hints?

    1. Arlen

      HI Dave, It’s the Keyboard Preference Pane in System preferences. Make sure you are on the Keyboard shortcuts tab and you’ll have no trouble creating the shortcuts.

  14. George from Tulsa

    David’s comment about “WHY” the folder structure seems to have gone right by many listeners. I keep lots of bank and broker statements. Once they’re reconciled with my accounting records, I rarely need them again. When I do, it’s to file an SEC claim, or participate in a class action. Such data retrieval is very simple, based on what bank or broker, and when the statement was issued.

    e.g., BankName Stmt 2012 01, BankName Stmt 2012 02

    No way are my bank and broker records going up unencrypted to a 3rd party service, like Evernote, that runs OCR on them!

    In the last few months I’ve been verifying old statements are properly stored in our hierarchical file structure, backed up locally and offsite, then sending the old paper to a professional, secure, shredding facility.

    I’m going to have some really nice empty file cabinets to donate, or sell.

    This is not rocket science, it doesn’t need OCR, or meta tags. We just need to be able to lay hands on a 10 year old statement to document when we bought a stock and how much we paid.

    Now I now David has fun with Hazel, bless his geeky soul. I tried it, but found it was easier and less time consuming to create my folder structure, then use Mac alias pointers to the current year folder for each bank/broker/account, and drop the file in there. Text Expander can help by inserting Year and Month, e.g., 2012 05; 2012 06. No biggie.

    Last, I have set one bank account for the main business I manage and use it for BILLS only. I can log onto that account online and move money into it. I keep just enough there to not worry about rubber checks, but most bills are auto-charged. Less and less paper!

  15. Jerome

    The book sounds good. But it is not in the UK iBook store.
    “The item you’ve requested is not currently available in the UK Store, but it is available in the

    US Store. Click Change Store to view this item.”
    I also get “The item you’ve requested is not currently available in the U.S. store.”

    Is it in limbo?

  16. Steve

    Hello,

    I really enjoy the podcasts!! They are great!!

    As far as paperless why do I need to capture my utility bill? Do I really need to have a local copy in my files? Especially when they are available on the utility companies website.

    Thanks,
    Steve

  17. Thomas Kitto

    Just listening to the podcast and have read the Paperless iBook. A great book with loads of good ideas and a very interesting format. Looking forward to more in the series.

    I have a good flatbed scanner and attempted to scan a document to PDF….yes, I can now confirm that flatbeds are not a good option for going down the paperless route!! It took me ages and the end result just didn’t do it for me. Hmm, I feel a SnapScan purchase coming on…damn you MPU, you guys always cost me money!!!

    Great shows, keep up the geeking.

  18. Kirit Vora

    David and Katie
    I have been a great fan and have been following Mac Power users from the very first podcast.
    I have admired you a lot and implemented many of your tricks in life, like using Apple mail with one address but sending out with different SMTPs.
    I used to use magic drive but now with Dropbox etc it has changed, but they are all your ideas any way.
    Like you are a nerdy lawyer I am a geeky doctor.

    So much for my credentials, reason I gave these is I am going to criticize you in a couple of places below and I do not want to offend you.

    OK

    I bought your Paperless book right away after the episode and now I am an evangelist for your ideas. I recommend it highly to whosoever listens
    I love the way you used all the Apple tools and made this amazon iBook. Videos and screencasts are just great
    Just because you asked for it here is my workflow learned from your book.

    Scan in Scansnap 1500M it goes to a folder in document called (-scan_input)

    I have Acrobat 10 pro (came free with Adobe Creative Cloud subscription -$30 month, maximum I will spend $600/year for all those apps-Sweet- but I digress)

    I have a folder action for (-scan_input) with apple script to OCR, I save in another folder in documents called “_scanned” (This is another favorite in Default Folder X so it is always there
    While saving I give a name like scan1 or 2 etc (temporary so it does not matter)
    But I put a short Spotlight comment in Default folder X as I am saving like ‘waterbill’ One word only

    Now Hazel has 3 rules

    First Hazel renames it with 2 tokens, Date(YEAR_MO_DAY) and spotlight comment
    Example 2012_05_19-waterbill
    It then moves it to a folder in Dropbox called “All Scanned”

    Second rule for Hazel is to monitor the “All Scanned” folder and anything that comes get copied to Google Drive

    Third rule Anything that comes to that folder in Google drive gets copied to Evernote

    I told you I was geek and I need 3 copies of every thing.

    Now 2 Criticisms

    I know you did show on get rid of Google and last week recanted a little bit in feedback about the$50/yr paid account not having those issues.
    But you missed talking about Google Drive.
    It is fantastic, fast, free and very large. File transfer is very fast.
    It is Dropbox on steroid.
    They will soon release App for iPhone and iPad then it will be perfect

    Second criticism is nested folders
    We have come long ways in our thinking.
    Nested folders are so 2009 and before.
    You yourself have done shows on Tags, keywords, open meta, spotlight comments, we need to get over the nested folder thing. Put the stuff with good name in one big basked, it is OCRed anyway.

    Continue the good work. I waiting for future field guides.
    Kirit Vora

    1. Rick

      I tend to disagree with your 2nd criticism: I would suggest that coupling nested folders with a tool like Yep gives you the best of both worlds. In Yep, if you focus on a specific folder that has sub-folders (and sub-sub-folders and so on), Yep shows all the files contained therein in its main pane as one flat grid, ignoring the internal structure of the folder, while showing the folder structure in the (optional) lefthand pane. If that generates too many extraneous items, you can focus on any sub-folder and just show the items (again in a flat grid) in that sub-folder.

      People have a lot of issues with the company that makes Yep, but I don’t think this new model for showing files and folders has ever been bettered. I’m half convinced that if more people knew about it such a feature would be demanded as standard in all kinds of software.

  19. autodidakto

    You guys did bring it up, but I want to emphasize the best way to go deal with paper:
    An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
    Or: The best way to manage something is to have less of it.
    Or: Kill the paper at the source if you can.

    But I have to ask: How often have you needed all the scans of old bills? Is it worth it? Are people expected to keep their old bills? If I opened someone’s closet and saw years of electricity bills, I’d be worried. I know digital doesn’t have the space issue (I’ll still be able to get through your hallway) but how much less hoarding is digital hoarding?

    1. Kevin Taylor

      I concur. I use the Freedom Filer filing system (http://freedomfiler.com/) to paper file the mostly unneeded bills like RoadRunner ISP, utilities, etc. I find it easier to stick the bill in the file and shred it 2 years later than log on to the website (yes, using 1Password) and navigate (via endless clicks) to the bill to save it, then rename it. I pay the bill online, scribble the confirmation code on the paper statement, file it, and I’m done. This is quicker to me than tacking screenshots of the confirmation code and then saving that too. There are important tax related statements that I scan, and investments I like to download and keep for posterity, but the inane ones I get by mail and process as above.

      What is really hurting us is this darn security for downloading statements. Companies make it too hard to access those bills and statements. It’s death by a thousand clicks, and all to save them money on printing and postage (while they claim thy are motivated by “going green”!). I was glad to see that some companies are trying to address this, but it’s a headache with all the proprietary systems.

      Thanks for a great and thought-provoking show!

  20. Steve

    Get the book, get the book. It is a great addition to the podcast and an excellent demonstration of how the techniques can be applied. Fine use of the iPad’s iBooks app and the free app to make an iBook.

    I may never get to be paperless, but I’ll be making better use of the two scanners I purchased when I first heard them mentioned on Mac Power users in an earlier podcast advocating paperless work flows. :-)

  21. George from Tulsa

    I’m back. Again, everyone suggesting database formats relying on metatags, etc., misses a very important point.

    Such programs go away, and change.

    That’s why Project Gutenberg wants, first, a plain ASCII text of the eBooks its volunteers prepare.

    Plain text is least likely of all formats to evaporate.

    PDF seems pretty well established, but even the PDF format can go way, or old files become unreadable in new readers. Not likely, but possible. We all know how Apple has changed its hardware, OS, and software, leaving old stuff in the dust. Could, but probably won’t, happen with PDF.

    Now if you have a higher end ScanSnap (at least the ones I have came with) you have Abby Finereader. Which enables you to scan your documents to “searchable” PDFs, meaning, run OCR and embed a sorta’ hidden text layer it is possible, at least using Acrobat Pro, to export.

    Is it necessary to scan gas bills? I do, because they’re business deductions, and there’s a chance the auditors might want to verify the detail.

    Probably not necessary for home users. Though our bills from ONG come with use history, and might tell you there’s a big leak on your side of the meter, either saving money, or keeping your house from going BOOM!

    My wife’s career included a stint at a giant multi-national that kept everything, stored in blast-proof, flood proof, storm-proof salt mines WAY deep, no humidity, and temperature naturally controlled. Even tape reels from 1950′s mainframes could be retrieved and mounted on gear the company kept for just that purpose.

    We don’t need to go so far, but do keep in mind that when data needs to be retrieved in the future, you’ll have much beter luck with David’s structured folders file names as indexes than you will with a “proprietary” program that may not work ten years from now.

    In fact, I have any number of backups going back twenty years. From programs that wrote on overlapping DOS floppies, to tape drives, only the most recent can be accessed. The computers, drives, and software that created most are long deceased.

      1. Stefan

        Sorry, in the previous post I got the HTML Syntax wrong and the “Reply” function doen’t allow edits. The Link should go to the PDF/A entry on Wikipedia.

  22. Jeff Petaja

    BUY THE FRIGGIN BOOK EVERYONE!

    Woohooo!!! Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times…YES!

    I want to respond to so many of my fellow MPU colleague comments but I can tell there is still a bit of confusion with all of this. $4.99 eradicates that in a heartbeat. Value=Priceless.

    I established an LLC less than a month ago and I’m all on my own. With every job I have had, I always notice there is one job that just sucks way worse than others. You know, that job that the lowest man on the totem pole has to do. Well, when you are your own boss you get the joy of doing all the fun stuff while being simultaneously being tasked with the crummy, low-totemish jobs. For me, the fear kicks in when I look at my physical inbox. In fact, my digital inbox can get out of hand as well.

    Coming from the audio engineering realm into knowledge work, many of these tools didn’t make sense to me as short as 6 months ago. Hazel rules, Automator tricks and even cloud storage was all foreign. I’ve been so hell bent on getting rid of paper but it just seems to keep piling up. I thought I was getting pretty close but the book (if you can call it that) showed me how far off I was. It would have taken forever! Mr. Sparks, thanks for the umpteen million hours you have saved your endearing fans.

    I literally purchased an iPad, Apple TV, iPhone 4s, Mac Mini, and even a Magic Trackpad all within this last week (for the business) and I will be setting using the Server software. (I’ll keep you posted) Needless to say, this podcast and book combo came out exactly when I needed it most. The Spring cleaning episode was timely as well…all right, who’s spying on me? :)

    So I have the iPad being mirrored as I flow through the book, with my MacBook Pro and iPhone at hend. Scansnap is at the ready and the stack (physical inbox) is about 2 feet deep! It really intimidated me two days ago. Now it’s just a joke! No document can handle the paperless ninja’s secret weapon..the OCR Ninja Throwing Star! (disclaimer: not an actual thing :P )

    What are we missing
    I think all this talk about paperless completely glazes over this book. I’m pretty sure it was in Back to the Future Part 2, where someone is reading a newspaper that has moving images etc. We’re there! We made it. I really hope the flying skateboards come next! Anyways, even if you don’t care about paperless, the book is worth getting purely for the user experience. Kudos to D.

    Funny Naming Conventions
    I used Katie’s method for a while, with period (.) instead of a dash (-) and was appalled when Sparks accused of of being anarchists! Haha, if that didn’t just crack you up, you may be missing a great element of the show. Time to go ask yourself what kind of nerd you really are. Good stuff.

    I converted to dashes when I got into Hazel because it seemed like the thing to do. I noticed some other posts that described using abc-yyyy-mm etc. And think it is worth reiterating the importance of having the year in the beginning. It automatically sorts your files. Also, I don’t ever think I could “out-nerd” David and Katie, but I may have over-nerded everyone by researching ISO 8601 which deals with naming conventions. Here is my new Time and Date snippet as a result! It’s slightly modified, but I like the “T” that separates the time.

    2012-05-20_T-8:14PM

    Finally, last week I made a post describe my commitment to try the Trackpad on the left with the mouse on the right.
    Results: No more mouse, trackpad on the right.

    A recent (long awaited upgrade) to Lion and the addition of the iPad has me focused on effective use of gestures. Really loving it.

    Also loving another listeners idea of Manual #2 being on Hazel. Anyone else have an opinion?

    1. Rick

      Just to clarify, I think it’s hyphens rather than dashes that you’re using there. Thanks for taking the time to check out ISO 8601. It does sound rather nerdy, but I really wish I had taken the trouble to think about such issues several years ago rather than switching at random between naming conventions. Yes, a Hazel show sounds good.

  23. Emory

    I’ve been well on the way to paperless for the last couple years, but your show and the ibook are great. I use Evernote generally for “non-sensitive” files (and keep synced across macs, iOS devices), and DevonThink Pro Office for bills, bank statements, business receipts, etc. I agree that a show on DevonThink would be great. I prefer DevonThink to a file structure, but have not figured out a way to really use Hazel well with DevonThink so documents can be scanned (using Scansnap) and easily/automatically get to DevonThink folders…. that would be great!

    Paperless is definitely the way to go (for both easily finding docs, and environment), but would like to get process more automated (and spend less time) using DT and Hazel.

  24. Aram

    Hi David,

    Thank you for great book! I’ve spent only 1.5 hours and got a lot of knowledge about getting paperless. it was just in time!

    Thank you again!
    Good luck!

    Aram

  25. MBBM

    How’s it going folks? Love the show. I’m a windows-to-Mac convert as of August 2010 and self-proclaimed Mac geek. I purchased a Neatdesk scanner a while back, but returned it after figuring it was just too costly. I was considering trying the neat receipts scanner until you mentioned that the Doxie Go is battery-operable. Scanning on the go sounds far too good to not try. Are there any discount codes? I also just purchased “Paperless” and am looking forward to reducing the clutter in my home office. Has anyone mentioned that it’s pun-like to have an electronic book named PAPERLESS?? Nicely done!

  26. Kevin Taylor

    Also, Evernote for the Mac does allow for local notebooks that don’t sync with the cloud. So it would be possible to store sensitive data in a local notebook, assuming there isn’t some backside glitch or error where it IS getting uploaded to the web. But the other problem is that the files and data can’t be password protected, nor can the Evernote Mac application itself be password protected. So if someone steals or accesses your Mac your data is compromised that way. So Evernote still remains unfavorable to sensitive data, which is a shame, since it’s such a handy application.

  27. Brian Clark

    You guys are fantastic! David you have written yet another great book in a format that is super effective for learning. I heard Katie speak about her experience with proprietary software and now wonder whether I need to ditch Devon Think. I have used Devon Think since moving to Mac in 2009 but wonder if it has added complexity and risk to my workflow. I am not looking forward to migrating out of Devonthink if that is my path.

  28. Thomas Kitto

    Just an update…

    Bleedin’ heck, didn’t realise the SnapScan S1300 was that small. My new purchase turned up today and I have to say that it is a fantastic device, fast, very good quality and the OCR so far has been spot on. Compared to my flatbed….well, for documents there is no comparison really.

    Now to get the rest of my paperless workflow sorted out.

  29. Troy

    So I bought the book, about half way through now. I’m getting excited about trying the paperless thing…. again (we won’t say which number try this is).
    The one thing I keep coming back to is scanning the existing documents, and dealing with multipage -vs- single page documents.
    If I throw a stack of papers in my scanner (I have an Epson 840, it’s a fast duplex scanner with sheet feeder that I’ve loved for the last year or so) everything will be an individual document or will it create one document with all pages? I guess it depends on the scan program, I have Adobe Pro X and my experience thus far is that a single scan session creates a single document. So what would a workflow look like for me to scan 15 single page bills into 15 separate files?

  30. Arlen

    Going Paperless Initial Setup Tip:

    My tip for starting off would be to organize all your statements and scan them together by year. (ie group all the electric bills for 2010 and scan them together)

    It’s not as searchable, but way easier for documents you probably will not need to find, especially as the years go by.

    Now that my tip is out there, I loved the book and the podcast. I’ve always wanted to go paperless since I closed my last office, but never found the right tools or the traction to do it. But between the podcast and book, I found everything I needed and I will be moving forward paperlessly!!! Thanks David & Katie!

  31. Tonio

    Setup Troubleshooting for Scan-to-Mobile option:

    I made the switch from PC to Mac (happily….because of my experience with my first iPhone….a 3GS purchased in Jan 2010) in Aug 2010 and have been a fan of your show since I first listened late last year. I first tried going paperless before knowing there was a movement on the topic. I found that typical home/small-business printers have TERRIBLE doc feeders. After hearing the paperless episode, I desperately wanted an S1100 (but eventually decided the ADF on the S1300i was more tempting). I was given one as a b-day gift and it arrived today. The duplex scanning worked terrifically when scanning to a folder. However, my attempts at scanning to the iPad app (3rd gen) gave a “port already in use” message that took multiple calls to Fujitsu and Apple to fix. I’ve included the steps below:

    1. system preferences
    2. network
    3. ensure network preference isn’t locked
    4. click the “+” sign to create a new service
    5. select applicable internet connection in “interface” dropdown (wi-fi, firewire, ethernet etc..)
    6. name the new service
    7. click “apply” in the lower corner of the network preference screen
    8. click “assist me”
    9. click “assistant”
    10. If a window appears saying “Network setup assistant is trying to modify your system settings. Type your password to allow this.”, enter password.
    11. Click the “settings” gear next the the ” – ” sign just above the lock option
    12. drag title of the new service above the service name of the original/current and click “OK”
    13. click “apply” in lower network preferences window
    14. ensure you have internet access
    15. in the Scansnap app, choose your computer from the dropdown window
    16. scan a test document (with your scanner connected to your computer) and the scansnap quick menu should open.
    17. choose the “scan to mobile” icon
    18. transfer should start immediately

    Afterwards, I changed my primary service back to the original wi-fi service and deleted the new service. All is working fine. Hope this remedy proves useful to other listeners. I also made my first donation to your show today. You guys are awesome!

  32. Pingback: Going Paperless: Learn & Start from the End | holscher

  33. Joe

    Just read the copy of paperless that was Agile Bits’ Thanksgiving gift for users. David, definitely tempted to go buy the book just to give you your $10. Totally agree w/Merlin that you’ve made tremendous, nearly ideal use of the medium.

    As I consider going paperless, here’s my question: I’ve moved all my financial documents to a sparse image that I load/mount only when I am going to actually use some of the docs inside (like when it’s tax time or when I am updating my financial records). But how do I integrate this into a workflow with an action folder and a bunch of hazel rules when the disk isn’t always mounted? Is the solution an automator routine? Or do you manually move financial files into your mounted disk?

Comments are closed.