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Last post Author Topic: Paperless Home: Need document management software  (Read 73014 times)

CodeTRUCKER

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #25 on: January 19, 2007, 02:47 PM »
Have you ever been able to automate input to OmnniPage?  What I mean is have you ever batched a job where you created a text file, etc. that was then able to be read into OmniPage and used OmniPage to create the final, searchable doc?  We used to do this in college...
« Last Edit: December 08, 2009, 06:43 PM by CodeTRUCKER »

Darwin

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #26 on: January 19, 2007, 05:05 PM »
Hopefully this is on-topic: I have Omnipage Pro 15 and PDFConverter Professional 4 and I am trying to figure out why I need PaperValet or PaperPort? PaperPort is on sale at Staples for $49 so I am kind of tempted (and PaperValet is attractive because it's a small download with lots of features) but I can't quite see the point. I am meticulous about digital file organisation (sadly this doesn't equate to ANY organisational abiliity in the physical world  :-[) and I don't have, and do not intend to buy, a scanner with multifeed capabilities. Is there any benefit to be derived from use of an app like Paperport?

Sorry to be dim, but I keep getting the come ons from Nuance about PaperPort and can never quite understand why I would need such an application.

Thanks,

Mike
« Last Edit: January 21, 2007, 01:11 AM by Darwin »

cranioscopical

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #27 on: January 19, 2007, 05:41 PM »
Darwin: I keep getting the come ons from Nuance about PaperPort and can never quite understand why I would need such an application.

I honestly don't think you do need it.  I once used its forerunner (nearly 10 years back) and it was useful then because electronic filing of documents as images was relatively new for home users.  My own view is that, now, for someone without a blizzard of documentation to handle it's just irrelevant (as long as that someone has a system of some kind and doesn't just drop files with random names into the root  of C:).
This probably is one of those subjects (like favourite editors) where proponents, pro and con, have quite strong views.  I'd never condemn using a document manager if that's what you like...it's just not something I need.  I guess I file about 1000-1500 documents in the course of a year and I've had no trouble locating one yet.
Had I hundreds of pages a day, on closely similar topics, I certainly could see the use for a more sophisticated system.

(FWIW what I need is something that can read and convert tens of thousands of handwritten pages [from many different hands, in many different layouts] into editable and searchable text.)

cranioscopical

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #28 on: January 19, 2007, 05:57 PM »
Farmsteader: Have you ever been able to automate input to OmnniPage?  What I mean is have you ever batched a job where you created a text file, etc. that was then able to be read into OmniPage and used OmniPage to create the final, searchable doc?  We used to do this in college...
I just use Omnipage on an ad hoc basis when I want a bit of material converted in a hurry.  Acrobat Pro handles most of what I need.  I'm sure what you suggest is perfectly feasible with most scripting languages.  Good point, Farmsteader.

Even easier, though would be to use this:
Omnipage 15 Pro help file:  In OmniPage Professional, you can specify folder watching and mailbox watching as job input, setup recurring jobs and the time options for watched folder jobs, create barcode driven jobs and request E-mail notification of job completion.
That being said, I'd still expect PaperPort to provide its own linking mechanism to Omnipage, especially if it claims to be OP friendly in its sales blurb.
Mind you, what would be common sense from a customer viewpoint doesn't always penetrate the vendor's awareness :)

Darwin

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #29 on: January 20, 2007, 11:29 AM »
Thanks Cranioscopical! That pretty much confirms my suspicions. I'm still "feeling my way" with OmniPage - love it's accuracy and builit in text editor. I've been with ReadIris Pro for several versions (through 11) and find it very easy to use and light on resources (loads in about a tenth of the time of OmniPage) but it's not as accurate when converting pdfs into editable text.

cranioscopical

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #30 on: January 20, 2007, 10:03 PM »
brotherS: What I wonder most: how is OmniPage going to work together with PaperPort? As in: how can I automate the creation of PDF files that are searchable? The PDF files that PaperPort now creates aren't searchable
Which version of PaperPort did you obtain?
According to the PaperPort site, PaperPort 11 Pro automatically hands stuff off to the OmniPage Workflow but PaperPort 11 (standard) does not.
If you don't have the PaperPort Pro version it looks as if a good bet might be to scan to an Omnipage 'watched' folder (possibly in an OmniPage-friendly format other than .pdf).

brotherS

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #31 on: January 21, 2007, 02:41 PM »
brotherS: What I wonder most: how is OmniPage going to work together with PaperPort? As in: how can I automate the creation of PDF files that are searchable? The PDF files that PaperPort now creates aren't searchable
Which version of PaperPort did you obtain?
According to the PaperPort site, PaperPort 11 Pro automatically hands stuff off to the OmniPage Workflow but PaperPort 11 (standard) does not.
If you don't have the PaperPort Pro version it looks as if a good bet might be to scan to an Omnipage 'watched' folder (possibly in an OmniPage-friendly format other than .pdf).
-cranioscopical (January 20, 2007, 10:03 PM)
Hi!

Yes, I upgraded to the PaperPort 11 Pro since the price was ok, but I can't get the automation regarding creating searchable PDF files to work.
 :(

Chris

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #32 on: January 23, 2007, 03:03 PM »
I have a freeware program that will scan single/multiple pages and save to PDF.

What is the program?

Chris

wuwei23

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #33 on: January 23, 2007, 07:25 PM »
For a cheaper option for the capture process, it's possible to use a digital camera on a fixed stand along with OCR software, in place of a scanner. Here are a couple of article's outlining the process:


The Tesseract OCR project is open and free for personal use. The excellent looking but as yet unreleased application Snapter is also targeting exactly this type of functionality.

(Edited to fix broken links)
« Last Edit: January 23, 2007, 07:57 PM by wuwei23 »

sboals

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #34 on: February 06, 2007, 11:53 PM »
Paperport/Omnipage are great, but try out eCopy desktop.  Much simpler to use, and cheaper!!!

Link below:

http://www.scanguru....page/links.php?cat.2


brotherS

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #35 on: February 07, 2007, 04:22 AM »
Paperport/Omnipage are great, but try out eCopy desktop.  Much simpler to use, and cheaper!!!

http://www.scanguru....page/links.php?cat.2
I couldn't find a price there, how much is it?

Since when do you use it and how often do you use it?

rjbull

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #36 on: February 07, 2007, 08:56 AM »
what I need is something that can read and convert tens of thousands of handwritten pages [from many different hands, in many different layouts] into editable and searchable text.)
-cranioscopical (January 19, 2007, 05:41 PM)

cranioscopical,

That seems to be what Evernote Plus ($39.95) claims to do...


sboals

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #37 on: February 13, 2007, 09:50 PM »


Hi dc'ers,

I'd like to try implement something close to a paperless office, what I'd like to do is:
1. Scan all paper documents received at home (bank statements, letters,...)
2. Use OCR if applicable (maybe, I'm not sure whether it's a good thing to do at the moment)
3. Store the scanned document in the right format (multi-page TIFF, multi-page PDF, other?)
4. Use a clever document storage (filesystem with nice/clean directory structure, dedicated database/revision management system,...)

Interesting user story: http://www.onlamp.co...ment_management.html

Possible software I've seen so far:
PDFFactory : http://www.fineprint...dffactory/index.html ($49.95 or $99.95 for the pro version)
ABBY Fineprint Reader Pro: http://www.abbyy.com...reader8/?param=44890 (~$160)
Perforce (see article by Jason Hunter referenced above) : http://www.perforce.com/ (free version available, limited to 2 clients)

Any comments on this? Has anyone set up a similar system?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers  /jerome

Paperport is great for desktop document management, but I would also recommend eCopy desktop.  Very powerful tool, with a lot of neat options. 

Check out the article at http://www.scanguru.com on the levels of Document Management.

Hi dc'ers,

I'd like to try implement something close to a paperless office, what I'd like to do is:
1. Scan all paper documents received at home (bank statements, letters,...)
2. Use OCR if applicable (maybe, I'm not sure whether it's a good thing to do at the moment)
3. Store the scanned document in the right format (multi-page TIFF, multi-page PDF, other?)
4. Use a clever document storage (filesystem with nice/clean directory structure, dedicated database/revision management system,...)

Interesting user story: http://www.onlamp.co...ment_management.html

Possible software I've seen so far:
PDFFactory : http://www.fineprint...dffactory/index.html ($49.95 or $99.95 for the pro version)
ABBY Fineprint Reader Pro: http://www.abbyy.com...reader8/?param=44890 (~$160)
Perforce (see article by Jason Hunter referenced above) : http://www.perforce.com/ (free version available, limited to 2 clients)

Any comments on this? Has anyone set up a similar system?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers  /jerome


cranioscopical

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #38 on: February 13, 2007, 10:55 PM »
what I need is something that can read and convert tens of thousands of handwritten pages [from many different hands, in many different layouts] into editable and searchable text.)
-cranioscopical (January 19, 2007, 05:41 PM)
rjbull:  cranioscopical,

That seems to be what Evernote Plus ($39.95) claims to do...
Thanks for the reply.
I'll look into it some more.  It wouldn't the last time I looked at it, but that was a while back.
The trouble is, I'll have 100 documents at a time, each with unique handwriting.  I've yet to see the software that can handle it, outside of HUGELY expensive applications (and they're not perfect).

mwb1100

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #39 on: February 14, 2007, 12:52 AM »
what I need is something that can read and convert tens of thousands of handwritten pages [from many different hands, in many different layouts] into editable and searchable text.)
-cranioscopical (January 19, 2007, 05:41 PM)

This seems like it might be a task for the "Amazon Mechanical Turk" (http://requester.mturk.com/mturk/welcome).

You can scan the documents into image files, then create a bunch of 'HITs' (Human Interface Tasks) to have someone transcribe the documents.  You indicate how much you'll pay per task, and if someone chooses to do the work, Amazon pays them the agreed amount out of your account (taking their cut, of course) once the work is verified.  I'm not sure how much you'd have to pay per page to get people interested, but I believe it costs nothing to set the tasks up (though you do have to place some funds in an account that will be used to pay any tasks that are completed).

When I browsed through the lists of available tasks, many of them are asking to identify images - these seem to pay about 5-10 cents for identifying a small set of images.

In reality, I think you might not have much success, but I think it would be an interesting experiment to try out for a couple dozen pages.  If you do this, please let us know how it goes.

rjbull

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #40 on: February 14, 2007, 09:41 AM »
That seems to be what Evernote Plus ($39.95) claims to do...
The trouble is, I'll have 100 documents at a time, each with unique handwriting.  I've yet to see the software that can handle it, outside of HUGELY expensive applications (and they're not perfect).
-cranioscopical (February 13, 2007, 10:55 PM)

I should have made it clearer that that's what the beta of EverNote Plus 2.0 claims to do, rather than the existing version.  You have a stiff test regime; maybe you should apply to be a beta tester  :)


cranioscopical

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #41 on: February 14, 2007, 10:54 AM »
what I need is something that can read and convert tens of thousands of handwritten pages [from many different hands, in many different layouts] into editable and searchable text.)
-cranioscopical (January 19, 2007, 05:41 PM)
This seems like it might be a task for the "Amazon Mechanical Turk" (http://requester.mturk.com/mturk/welcome).
You can scan the documents into image files...If you do this, please let us know how it goes.

Thanks for the link, it's nice of you to post it for me.  I'll take a look as soon as I have a bit more time to experiment.  The problem is that my stuff is time critical.  Currently I employ people directly who read and type the material, and it has to be in a specific format  Computers ought to be able to handle these kinds of operations, and probably can if I can just find the right contacts/software/combinations thereof.   

cranioscopical

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #42 on: February 14, 2007, 11:42 AM »
I should have made it clearer that that's what the beta of EverNote Plus 2.0 claims to do, rather than the existing version.  You have a stiff test regime; maybe you should apply to be a beta tester  :)
Yes, good idea, that should bring them to their knees :D

sboals

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #43 on: February 26, 2007, 09:47 PM »
I wrote up some info on how to examine the features of a new scanner and make the right choice:

http://www.scanguru.com/page.php?15


brotherS

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #44 on: February 27, 2007, 06:10 AM »
I wrote up some info on how to examine the features of a new scanner and make the right choice:

http://www.scanguru.com/page.php?15
Nice! What about linking that page to this thread?

Darwin

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #45 on: March 05, 2007, 09:58 AM »
Hmph! I just RMA'd my copy of PaperPort Professional 11 after having it loaded for three weeks. Two categories of issue for me: 1. BUGGY and SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW! 2. My suspicions were confirmed - I can't see the point. Don't misunderstand, there are some fantastic features - the cleanup tools for scans are BRILLIANT, but not worth the price for me. I can achieve everything with DOpus and do it a lot quicker. Note, too, that indexing using OCR is ridiculously slow.

I also have reservations about Scansoft/Nuance's technical support policy - one free call/e-mail and $9.95 per incident after that, regardless of whether it is a problem with their product or not. Note that even if they can't fix your problem,  you're still on the hook for $9.95. Paying to report bugs is not something I am prepared to do...

OK Rant over.

edbro

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #46 on: March 12, 2007, 12:33 PM »
I have a freeware program that will scan single/multiple pages and save to PDF.

What is the program?

Chris
Sorry, I just noticed this request from a while back. The prog is Scan2PDF.
http://www.koma-code...;id=39&Itemid=82

Darwin

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #47 on: March 25, 2007, 11:57 AM »
A thought/request: as noted above, I was very impressed with PaperPort 11 Pro's toolset for cleaning up scans (actually, any image file) and wonder if anyone knows of any standalone app that will accomplish the same thing? I'm using to Paint Shop Pro to achieve the same thing but it is not nearly as easy and, at least where the colour correction/replacment feature is concerned, seems more "lossy".

PS am editing jpgs that someone sent me from their scanner. I save that as psp files and then work on them - this does, to a degree cut down on "loss"...

tomos

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #48 on: March 25, 2007, 02:08 PM »
PS am editing jpgs that someone sent me from their scanner. I save that as psp files and then work on them - this does, to a degree cut down on "loss"...

another thing you can do is re-save it as a jpeg (same name or new name as you wish) and make sure its saved at lowest compression.
Tom

Darwin

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Re: Paperless Home: Need document management software
« Reply #49 on: March 25, 2007, 05:27 PM »
Thanks for the tip tomos - I'll give that a shot.