Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with documents

Archival Digital Texts

dylan_k — Mon, 06 May 2013 09:12:31 -0800

I have inherited my grandmother's writings. I'm scanning them, doing OCR and in some cases retyping them so that I can have them digitized. I'd like to know, is there a format for text that is best for archival purposes? I was thinking of .rtf, since so many applications can open it. Is it considered "archival quality"?

A good document scanner for business and tax docs?

chasing — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:09:52 -0800

Dear collective intelligence that lives inside my web browser: I'm looking for a good document scanning and organization solution for my business. Tax docs are getting lost. Bills are getting overlooked. It's a mess. I'm a digital person and sheets of paper just get totally ignored/lost. I use Evernote a little bit, and they recommend the SnapScan line of scanners from Fujitsu. Which look pretty decent. Portable is nice. Anyway, does anyone have any such experiences/recommendations they'd like to share. Thanks!

Moving to SSD, moving iTunes, overthinking beans

Admiral Haddock — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:08:03 -0800

I am adding an SSD as a boot drive in my Mac Pro. I am comfortable installing it, and intend to clone the existing boot drive onto it with SuperDuper! However, I'm confused about how and WHEN to move my documents, iTunes library, etc. in the process. Can you help? I am adding a 512GB SSD as a fifth drive in the Mac Pro using the spare optical bay. Right now, this is the setup:

Drive 1: 640GB Boot drive, with all programs and documents (inc. iTunes, etc.)
Drive 2: 1TB photo drive
Drive 3: 2TB photo drive
Drive 4: Time Machine.

I'm using about 540GB of the current boot drive, of which about 200GB is iTunes, documents, pictures, and videos. Ultimately, I'd like to separate all of those from the SSD boot drive, either locating them on Drive 3, or the current Drive 1 (which will no longer be the boot drive).

I don't know how to proceed though--I don't have enough room on the SSD to do a straight clone without moving those directories, but I know some of them (iTunes library) can't just be moved willy nilly. (I DO want to keep playcounts, etc.) And, again, to complicate things, I probably would ultimately want them to stay where they are (Drive 1) and just move the boot drive and applications to the SSD.

Would it be better to try to take the time to move everything but the iTunes library to another drive (which could theoretically get me below 512GB (yes, I realize it will be smaller once formatted)), and then clone Drive 1 with the iTunes library where it is, and THEN target iTunes back to Drive 1? Maybe I should just dump everything into Drive 3, which has 1.4TB free?

And how do I move the documents and downloads folders?

Bonus Question: I've been backing up to Time Machine (which I know can back up multiple volumes) and to a SuperDuper! clone on an external drive. What's the best way to use SuperDuper now that I'm splitting off the boot drive from all my documents?

Blerg! Thanks!

Turn off Google Drive Preview "Feature"

decathecting — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 17:58:46 -0800

Google Drive (formerly Google Docs) has just unveiled a new "feature," that makes Google Drive open most files in a "preview" mode when you click on them, instead of just opening the file for editing/saving/etc. I would like to turn this "feature" off so that my files actually open. How can I do this? Apparently, CTRL+clicking or opening a file in Preview and then selecting "Open" is the only way to actually get the files to open so that they can be edited or downloaded or printed or whatever. But that's incredibly irritating! Multiple people have posted in Google's Help forums asking how to turn this off, but so far, no one has any answers. Google has these pages about it, but I couldn't figure out what they were talking about or how to do what they suggest. So I turn to the people of AskMe. Is there any way to fix this "feature?" Please explain to me like I'm your 80-year-old, computer illiterate grandma, just to make sure I understand it.

How do I create a legal agreement in Hungary?

Dee Xtrovert — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 20:15:49 -0800

I need to draw up an agreement that would be legally enforceable in Hungary. The catch is, the circumstances of all parties (and witnesses) signing it are such that meeting at a notary's will be very impossible. Would a document signed by both parties and two witnesses be considered legally binding in Hungary? Great thanks in advance.

Organize my exhibits!

frizzle — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 14:32:26 -0800

I'm looking for the smallest, most streamlined way to hold 15-20 documents that each have a plastic report cover (similar to this.) I need a way to organize a number of documents/exhibits while keeping them in plastic report covers. A traditional binder is out because of the three-ring issue, but is what I have in mind aesthetically. A folder doesn't seem organized enough. It needs to be something I can keep on a tabletop, so a file box wouldn't work.

Why is WORD inserting a whole new line when I type an apostrophe?

DMelanogaster — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 06:12:55 -0800

Why is WORD inserting an extra line every time I type an apostrophe? I am using WORD 2007 and, each time I type an apostrophe, WORD respaces my document -- specifically, the line after the one I'm typing in goes down one single-space line. I've searched this on Google and all I can find are a lot of posts complaining that WORD inserts one long space after certain punctuation - but never that it inserts an entire new LINE, so that if you're set on single space, now you have 1 1/2 spaces, but just in between that line with the apostrophe and the next line.

Here is a sample, demonstrating what I'm talking about:

----
Here's a sample of the phenomenon of which I speak. You can see that we have a double

space between this line and the previous one. That is because of the apostrophe in the word "Heres" (I didn't put that apostrophe in this "Heres" because I did not want it to do it again.) The next line -- this one -- is single spaced, as is set in my formatting. In this sample, though, there is a double space up there, while in my real document, it would only look like another half-space -- but I couldn't recreate that here.

Has anyone experienced this? My document is now a MESS because of it. Thanks.

No really, must I keep my 3rd grade diploma?

Ruthless Bunny — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 14:29:09 -0800

I have boxes of neatly organized crap! I would like to upload as much as possible to "the cloud" thus freeing up space in the basement for the kitteh olympics. I need recommendations! I'm interested in scanning all of our printed photos and organizing them into a cohesive set of digital "albums" that I can share with friends and family on-line. Also, once that's done, I'd like to save to discs and ditch the actual albums that I've been schlepping around since the Regan administration.

I'd like to be able to make notes on each picture, names, dates, situation, etc.

Secondly, I'd like to upload all of our insurance info, pink-slips, deeds, etc, so if we have to bug out ahead of another "Super-Storm" I can access important documents from my iPhone, or at least using a lap top.

I'm willing to spend under $500 for photo scanners, document scanners, and good software to help me organize all of this stuff.

Husbunny has "papers" and other stuff from childhood. I'd like to digitize and organize it for him, so we can stop courting the hanta virus from all of these old, dusty papers.

What does the hive mind recommend?

Not so much to ask, really

FatherDagon — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 13:38:06 -0800

So, I got myself an Android tablet, specifically for DnD nerdery. Now I've got some specific desires for pdf and spreadsheet programs - but am having a hell of a time tracking down apps that can what I want. Are these things really that hard to do in Jelly Bean? For spreadsheet stuff, I've got some .xls sheets that I use for reference. What I'd like to do is be able to drastically change a cell with one or two taps at the most - fill it all black, put a big X in it, something. In excel for Win7 I was able to use macros to set cells up as single-click Marlett checkboxes in several columns which worked beautifully, but that particular slice of VBA is not Android friendly.

So far the closest I've found is Kingsoft Office, which has a ribbon of functions at the top including a fill command. I can tap-select a cell, tap fill, tap the color, but I'd love to just select the cell and tap one thing to fill or clear it. Is there any program that allows creation of shortcuts in the top ribbon?

For .pdfs, my need is much more simple - tabbed reading of multiple pdfs. I'd love something that runs like Foxit Reader, but apparently the Android version of Foxit is a) not free and b) kind of crap. None of the other pdf readers do tabbed reading in a simple-to-switch format. Any suggestions?

For clarity, I'm running non-rooted 4.2 Jelly Bean on an Asus Transformer Infinity TF700TT.

Scanning many old, thin pages

dylan_k — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 19:55:06 -0800

I have inherited a 1,000+ pages of my grandmother's writings. I would like to scan them, OCR them and (after fixing OCR mistakes) share them with the rest of my family online. My question is this: what's the best way to scan so many pages? Also, I should point out that many of the pages are on thin typing paper. Maybe this is carbon paper? or onion skin paper? I'm not sure but I don't want to damage the originals. To add more detail, I should add that, once the documents are scanned, I know how to do the OCR, and how to create digital documents, etc. What would be most helpful for me would be to figure out a process I can do to get the pages scanned as quickly and cheaply as possible, without harming them.

Need an electronic filing cabinet.

gracedissolved — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 12:41:13 -0800

I'm getting a scanner. I would keep my personal files electronically. Is Evernote Premium pretty much my option, or is there some other less expensive alternative I can use if I don't need cloud storage? The big huge things for me are tagging and the ability to search OCRed text in PDFs--that's the only reason I really want to go through the effort of digitizing my current stuff. Evernote Premium will do the text search thing, but that's $45/year basically forever? And I'm really not keen on that. This isn't the sort of stuff I need to get to from anywhere; I'm fine with it just being on my desktop computer and periodically backed up. All of the files will be PDFs. Is there something that will work well for this without the ongoing service charge?

If Evernote really is the best thing for this, that's what I'll probably end up with, but I'm hoping to be able to trim the cost a bit since I really don't need to access my lease from the web, I just want to be able to pull it up on my home computer without having to physically search my boxes of papers every time.

Is there a secure online filing cabinet application?

babbageboole — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 12:01:48 -0800

Is there a filing cabinet app that is: secure, online, stable, metasearchable, user-friendly, and cross-platform? 1. Secure. Not like DropBox secure where the employees maintain the keys and can unencrypt documents by accident or design, but user-supplied keys.

1.5. Secure, corollary: Encryption/decryption must therefore happen on the client side. If it reaches the server side unencrypted, it's too late.

2. Online. I want the data to be available where ever I am.

3. Stable. Whatever cloud it is, it can't be some rinky-dink outfit that popped up last month and might not be here next year. Anything leveraging off Amazon S3 or Google's Cloud would be ideal, or even a solution which lets you use your own servers.

4. Metadata Search. I don't want to search inside documents; I just want to tag documents with keywords and be able to pull up those documents later. For example, documents about "pets" would pull up all pet-related documents, and documents about "cat" and "pets" would pull up all documents about my pet cats.

5. Cross-platform. I have both OSX and Windows machines that need to access the documents.

6. User-friendly: I need other people to be able to upload, search, and download my documents, which means it needs an interface good enough for non-geeks.

Why? Because I have tons of paper documents from my life which includes financial documents that I want to scan, upload to a cloud, and be able to pull down when I need to, without having to worry about whether my disks will crash or a security breach releases my docs.

After having searched for over a year for anything like this, I've come up empty. None of the cloud file storage companies fit all the criteria. SpiderOak comes the closest, but does not have metadata search (and my request for that feature resulted in a resounding silence).

Solutions which add a second layer to an insecure solution are fine, but the ones I've seen are generally either not cross-platform, not user-friendly, don't encrypt at a file level, or still wouldn't support metadata.

I've written a program which uses the Amazon S3 cloud to do what I need, but I'm really not happy with it since I suck at GUI.

Any suggestions? Am I looking for the wrong thing? Is there an alternative that is just as good?

Bring back the .doc

DiscourseMarker — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:00:30 -0800

I am getting the following error when trying to save in .doc format in Microsoft Word 2011 for Mac (v. 14.2.0): "the save failed due to out of memory or disk space". I can open .docs, but can only save as .docx. This happens with brand new documents and old ones. I have searched in vain for this issue. I see that others have had this problem, but none of the various solutions I have found have helped. I have repaired permissions, and trashed the Word plist.

I also get the same error when I try to save as .rtf. If I try to save as .txt, Word just crashes.

This is on a Macbook Pro running Lion (10.7.3), and I've been having the problem since at least some time in the fall. I would just default to .docx except that I have had students and some colleagues who cannot always open .docx files, so I need to be able to have the .doc available. Plus - what happened to .rtf??

Going paperless at home. Need a software to organize all digital documents

zaxour — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 06:40:56 -0800

I am going paperless at home and I need some program that will take care of digitized stuff with tagging. I am going paperless at home and I need some software to be able to organize everything. It turns out that I made multiple copies of a lot of stuff (documents, videos, audio, photos, notes) on main laptop HDD and external HDDs. I am not really able to keep a track of everything and its turning into a mess. I am in need of some software that will take care of documents, preferably with tagging.

In the past at work, I have used Paperport (that came with our scanner) and it was slow but did the job (tagging wasn't a thing at that time). At next job, I used a software called as Yep, until it was free and it was the best. I would love to have such software for PC but haven't found one.
Currently, I am just using regular folder system to put the documents in but looking for something like Yep that will allow me to search document using a tag.

I have Everything installed that pretty much gets me what I want, if I know the file name otherwise I am lost. I am not interested in Google Desktop or similar programs.

How to manage the schedule and preparation for a very busy public official.

metamush — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 07:24:27 -0800

Can you help solve a public official's staff project management woes? I work for a public official, but I imagine that this could apply to CEOs or organization leaders of any kind. Any leader who has a staff of 10-15 of people managing public events, private meetings, etc. Here are some of the challenges:

The calendar. My boss has dozens of meetings, speaking engagements, and other events every day, and not all in the same city. We use Outlook to manage his calendar, but the only way that we staffers can see his events on our mobile phones is if we ourselves are invited to them by the scheduler. So, most events have about 10 staffers confirmed with them, though many of them have nothing to do with preparation for the meeting or the event.

Who's in charge of preparation? In the Outlook event calendar notes area we assign a key staffer for the event. But sometimes the staffer throws a memo into the field, and no one sees it, and sometimes doing that works but it requires a new invitation to be sent out and accepted by everyone.

Finally, if you are assigned to be the key staffer to the event, the only way you can find out is by going through the calendar one by one and looking. Not ideal. In addition to pasting memos in the event fields, we also throw documents into Dropbox to be viewed on the go.

The boss needs:
To be able to see his calendar on his computer and on his iPad
To be able to read associated materials (legislative memo, bio of person he is meeting, etc)

We need:
A way to see the boss's calendar on our computers and iPhones without necessarily being invited to events
A way to assign specific staffers to events and track progress
A way to share documents in the office and on the go

Do you have suggestions for teams that manage not a company but an individual leader? Apps? Project management systems?

Thanks.

Options to replace Google Documents

Flood — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:30:31 -0800

Options to replace Google Documents? I have been using google for years, but their recent up-date has made their site unusable.

In gmail, my eyes are not good enough to discern "read" mail and "new" mail. There is apparently no way to increase the contrast.

But my big issue is google documents. The up-dated version is slow, clunky and crashes. The spread-sheet is completely unusable. The word document is almost as bad. I can't take it anymore. I am done with google.

I need to have some sort of simple cloud computing, where I can access a few documents and a few spread-sheets for various computers. Now that google has gone to pot, what can I do?

Is there any other free cloud documents, similar to google documents out there?

Word 2004 to Word 2011

greta simone — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:54:56 -0800

Switching from Word for Mac 2004 to Word for Mac 2011. Formatting and compatibility issues. Really truly clueless. Help? So I got a new MacBook Pro (Oct 2011), and currently have the trial version of Word (Office) for Mac 2011. I transferred all my documents from my old hard drive (MacBook 2007), which were saved as .doc’s in Office 2004. These are my issues:

--When opening up my 2004 documents in 2011, they open up in a .doc ‘compatability mode’. Everything looks normal and fine on my end, but after sending that document to a friend, the formatting is all screwed up on her end. The friend I sent it to is using the same 2004 of Word that I used to have. She is seeing lines where I don’t see lines on my end (this is a resumè I’m editing).

--So I tried to copy and paste it into a new 2011 document. I saved it as a .docx (when I tried to save it as just a .doc it said that that’s the same as compatibility mode). After sending that to the aforementioned friend, she opened it to find that it was totally blank, where obviously on my end it was not.

--So WTF do I do here? This is for the process of resumè and cover letter submissions, so I can’t just use google docs or cut and paste into the body of an email (I am mostly instructed to submit my resumè and cover letter as attachments).

And lastly, is it an acceptable practice to email pdf versions of resumès and cover letters when applying for a job? Or should it absolutely be a .doc or some version? Maybe I can try making pdfs?

It might be worth noting that I work in a field that tends to be underfunded, so it’s probably safe to assume that the people I’m emailing don’t necessarily have the most up-to-date software.

Thanks for you help, and apologies if I sound like a complete fool.

How to digitize my life?

stenoboy — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 10:04:30 -0800

Digitizing just about everything: anyone done it before? Pitfalls? I'm in the process of simplifying my life (although it seems more complicated in the doing than I thought), and I'm in the middle of digitizing everything.

I've downloaded all the books I can to my Kindle/iPad and got rid of the hard copies (given to charity shop); I've scanned in some easy-to-rip apart books that I want to read again and put those on my iPad (as a pdf); I'm now in the process of ripping all my CDs to iTunes.

What concerns me most are important documents like birth certificate, mortgage details, insurance papers, etc. I'm thinking of scanning them in but keeping the originals in a safe place. Has anyone ever got rid of the originals, and if so, has it been OK so far?

I am also wondering what the tax position is in the UK with scanned receipts as opposed to the hard copies. I am a freelancer, and I wonder if scanned receipts are deemed acceptable or too open to fraud.

Any advice, tips, or warnings?

iPod touch offline tips please

mary8nne — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 04:08:09 -0800

What is the easiest way to dump and or sync a directory (or two) of documents to my iPod Touch (v4?) 32Gb iOS 5.0.1 for access when offline. I want to use my iPod Touch as my sole computing device when travelling abroad and was hoping there was a way to dump a bunch of data onto it. pdfs, txt files, .docs, pngs, jpgs, travel details, notes, reading material etc. Generally I wont' have Wi-Fi access so I want offline apps / offline storage tips. There are a few older threads from 2009 but I thought perhaps there are new apps that can do this?

I"ve tried Dropbox but it doesn't cache all the documents on the iPod Touch. (unless you "star" them and even then its not so certain that you will have that particular document).

I"m trying out Evernote but have just about hit that 60Mb monthly limit on day 1. I've also been using Simplenote which is good for text notes but can't handle anything more.

For maps I've been using CityMaps2Go which allows you to buy maps of individual cities and gives offline access.

For language translators I"ve got a few of the Accio offline language translators and quite like those (and they are cheap).

I actually use the iPod a lot - every day. but just not for music. Apple doesn't seem to favour that though.

Help me find the best PDF management software for a Pd.D researcher

arco — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 08:16:38 -0800

Looking for the absolute best and (preferably) easiest way to manage thousands of PDFs as part of dissertation research. My girlfriend is embarking on her Ph.D dissertation in history, and has spent the last few months digitizing about 60 reels of microfilm (more than 60,000 pages broken down into multi-page PDFs for each document). She's looking for the most robust, intuitive way to manage and use these files, and is hoping AskMe can provide personal recommendations for software packages she should explore.

She would like a program that has the following features:

1) Built-in file/PDF viewer (of course).
2) Ability to tag files and take notes on them, then search/sort across notes and tags. The file names contain essential information about each file, so those must be maintained and incorporated into the sort options.
3) Good OCR would be awesome, but not essential. A large number of the documents are handwritten or were poorly-microfilmed, but it still would be nice to have at least some search capability.
4) Ability to ingest and manage a huge number of files, of all sizes. Again, we're talking more than 60,000 pages in 30,000-40,000 or so PDFs.
5) Intuitive to use. Ideally, the software would "get out of her way" and allow her to focus on the actual document contents and not spend her time futzing with the interface.

Are there other features she hasn't considered that would make this project more manageable?

She uses PCs, but if the absolute best software of this type is Mac-based please let us know. She may be getting a new laptop soon, so if there is a strong case for getting a Mac as part of this it will be taken into consideration. A web-based solution would be intriguing, but remember that she will be dealing with tens of thousands of documents that she wants to navigate through easily and quickly. I experimented with Google Docs and Zotero, but both seemed to get overwhelmed by the number and size of files she would be dealing with.

She's willing to spend money on this, but I suppose there is a limit. If there's a free option that can handle that many files easily, all the better. Right now she's just wanting to get a sense of her options.

Any and all suggestions would be appreciated!

Does an elegant solution for editing documents in Track Changes exist?

scrm — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 02:19:27 -0800

I'm looking for well-designed word processing software that lets me edit documents in Track Changes and is compatible with MS Word. Does it exist or am I dreaming? A large part of my work involves managing edits to documents that are worked on by multiple people. Normally we use the Track Changes feature in Microsoft Word to do this.

But using Word is a pain because:

It's bloated and crashy on both Windows and Mac.

The implementation of Track Changes is poorly designed: with many changes and comments, revisions disappear into a separate window; it's not possible to comment cleanly on text that is removed (for example to give a justification for a deletion); previous history is lost as changes are accepted.

Software like IA Writer made writing enjoyable again by cutting out the cruft. Assuming that formatting only happens when the text editing is finished, does a similar solution not exist for editing documents with Track Changes? Ideally something that is compatible with Word's implementation, as it's hard to get a ton of people to switch their system (so not GDocs or wikis). Bonus points for being cross-platform, particularly IOS.

Does anyone know of any software that could fit this requirement? Is there one in development I can support? Or just a halfway-house solution in the meantime?

Historical documents online?

o2b — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 07:37:57 -0800

My company got lucky and we're working on a web site for an amazing historical society, showcasing a ton of documents from their collection. Do you have any examples of how historical documents are being showcased online? Do you have any suggestions for what they don't do that you wish they would? The images we have are of very very good quality (recent archival scans) so we'd like to show them off as beautifully as possible.

The more links the better — even if the site isn't beautiful, but they have a fantastic feature you love, that's totally great too!

Legal wizards: How do I find out if these divorce papers are real?

tamagogirl — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 22:04:38 -0800

Legal wizards: How do I find out if these divorce papers are real? This has been driving me crazy for months.

A certain person who has done a lot of good in the world, and who is one of my heroes, has apparently had some VERY disturbing divorce papers leaked online. I've googled and googled the appropriate search terms to try and figure out whether these legal documents are real or fake (yeah, I'm obsessive), but I'm no closer to finding out the answer. And just about all the references to the supposed papers are coming from sites/blogs that hate the person!

I refuse to put this person's name in my question (I'm not putting up a link, either), because I don't want to spread misinformation or do any damage to her/his character if the documents are a forgery. And even if it's all true, I'm capable of separating the personal from the political (despite my heart sinking a bit [okay, a lot]), and I will still admire all the positive things s/he's done. Still, the question continues to nag at me. Any solutions, Hive Mind?

Best apps for saving and editing word docs on iPad?

RampantFerret — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:56:36 -0800

I am looking for an app for my iPad that allows me to save word documents from the Internet, open them and edit them preferably with a handwriting ability, on the iPad without having to filter them through googledocs or convert them to PDFs. I am basically looking to eliminate having to go through another normal computer from the process so that I can download, view and edit my class note outlines right in class on my iPad. Any app suggestions? I am willing to invest a bit of money in an app if it does what I want.

What's a good way to package professional documents?

arveale — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 09:31:11 -0800

What are some creative, yet professional ways to present documents to clients? I work in a law firm and my boss has asked me to look into ways in which we can present clients with their requested documents in a creative and distinctive way.

We already provide the closing documents on a residential real estate sale in a box shaped like a house, sealed with ribbon. It is a little corny, but clients love it and we put some candy inside if they have kids. We are looking do something similar for other clients.

For example, if a client is having their will drafted or a trust created, what ways could we package those documents.

Another example: If a client is starting his or her own business, how can we present them with their incorporation documents that celebrates the achievement, but is still professional.

The costs shouldn't be too high, because we do not want the clients eating the costs of aesthetic touches.

I have looked online for ideas for packaging documents, but my google-fu is failing me a bit.

Any ideas?