Going paperless at home. Need a software to organize all digital documents
April 10, 2012 6:40 AM Subscribe
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.
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.
Fujitsu's excellent scansnap scanners come with Adobe Acrobat which will OCR your documents for you.
I use a naming scheme like year/YYYY-MM-DD companyname title.pdf
Any more is too much overhead and can be searched for.
posted by devnull at 6:45 AM on April 10, 2012
I use a naming scheme like year/YYYY-MM-DD companyname title.pdf
Any more is too much overhead and can be searched for.
posted by devnull at 6:45 AM on April 10, 2012
Response by poster: Before it goes into Evernote thread, let me mention, I am not comfortable going these documents in the cloud (though I have an option not to sync those folders).
I already have a scanner, Epson PhotoPerfection V300 and I have some OCR software with it, so OCR is not an issue.
What other option do I have than Evernote?
posted by zaxour at 6:53 AM on April 10, 2012
I already have a scanner, Epson PhotoPerfection V300 and I have some OCR software with it, so OCR is not an issue.
What other option do I have than Evernote?
posted by zaxour at 6:53 AM on April 10, 2012
DevonThink, if you're on a Mac. It's designed to integrate with the ScanSnaps quite well and has an amazing built-in search capacity. The one downside is price—it's definitely a product designed for power users (and the price reflects that) and you need to get the pro version for the built-in OCR. Having said that, it's so useful for any kind of information management that you may well grow to use it for much more than just your PDFs.
posted by philosophygeek at 7:03 AM on April 10, 2012
posted by philosophygeek at 7:03 AM on April 10, 2012
If you just want tagging, recent versions of Windows have this built in for some documents, which might work for you depending on what file types you have. There's a guide here.
posted by xchmp at 7:27 AM on April 10, 2012
posted by xchmp at 7:27 AM on April 10, 2012
I have been using Paperless to manage receipts and some other documents. In theory, it could do what you want. It's really designed mostly for receipts (it has a spreadsheet-like interface), and to be honest, it's somewhat lacking in the kind of spit-polish that would make it pleasant to use.
posted by adamrice at 7:31 AM on April 10, 2012
posted by adamrice at 7:31 AM on April 10, 2012
Response by poster: Quick update,
I am using PC and majority of the files are in pdf or text format. Thanks for the pointers so far.
@ xchmp,
I had no clue, thanks for this pointer. Only thing I am not very clear is, how do I search for the tags once the files are tagged.
This is where actually Yep excels that it makes a tag cloud so its easy to look for and search for the tag. I wonder if there is any Yep clone for PC.
posted by zaxour at 7:35 AM on April 10, 2012
I am using PC and majority of the files are in pdf or text format. Thanks for the pointers so far.
@ xchmp,
I had no clue, thanks for this pointer. Only thing I am not very clear is, how do I search for the tags once the files are tagged.
This is where actually Yep excels that it makes a tag cloud so its easy to look for and search for the tag. I wonder if there is any Yep clone for PC.
posted by zaxour at 7:35 AM on April 10, 2012
Response by poster: @ adamrice,
Just noticed that they do have windows version of Paperless, will give it a try. Thanks.
posted by zaxour at 7:39 AM on April 10, 2012
Just noticed that they do have windows version of Paperless, will give it a try. Thanks.
posted by zaxour at 7:39 AM on April 10, 2012
Some people I know like Mendeley.
A couple previous posts that may give you ideas: here and here.
posted by Wretch729 at 7:42 AM on April 10, 2012
A couple previous posts that may give you ideas: here and here.
posted by Wretch729 at 7:42 AM on April 10, 2012
Evernote supports offline notebooks. That or block it's access to the internet.
posted by wongcorgi at 10:06 AM on April 10, 2012
posted by wongcorgi at 10:06 AM on April 10, 2012
Seconding DevonThink, if you can tolerate mercurial developers and haphazard updates. (and have a Mac.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:08 PM on April 10, 2012
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:08 PM on April 10, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by randomination at 6:44 AM on April 10, 2012