It’s more future proofing. I generally go back 2-3x/year (minimum) looking for things. But, this year has been rough and an eye-opener, I saw friends scrambling trying to figure out bills from their parents, etc. Essentially, I want to make it easy enough so that my family can go to a folder named ABC broken down by categories and easy sorting for them versus having to dig, search, etc for everything so that when I am no longer here they feel secured a bit more.
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It’s a balancing act.
On the one hand, when something goes wrong it is nice to know some things are already sorted out. It means that in times of stress you can actually focus on the important issue at hand. It’s also nice to spend less time up front doing things that may never be needed. Time is my most valuable commodity.
It’s also good to keep in mind that it might not be me trying to find that needle in the haystack.
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This sounds like a great use for tags instead of (or in addition to) folders.
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I think for $99 you get it forever vs. a subscription model. It does look pretty intriguing but I will have to ponder.
Still seems very expensive though. I’m going to stick with Scanner Pro which does everything I need when I’m out. I’ve got a ScanSnap 1100 everything else.
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I think the real answer here is to use whatever level of priority your brain naturally finds without thinking about it. Banking for all my family goes in a banking folder but I put medical records for the kids in their individual folders. It really doesn’t make sense but my brain just went there so I use that. I never have to think about it that way.
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I use a very different file structure. Very flat with basically no subfolders.
I do the same sort of thing in my Omnifocus system. It has as repeating projects how I handle all the bills etc. And within those projects are the details of where the files are in my digital or paper filing cabinet.
I’ve bene watching the Paperless videos as I am scanning a bunch of paper that I want to finally archive. I’m currently working on some stuff that is now about 11-16 years old.
It’s also been a while since I verified file readability and formats on the archive files so I’m doing some conversions as I clean things up.
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I have a question. MacSparky mentioned the PDF-A archive format but then nothing really about how to use it or what apps save in that format or the differences between it and “normal” PDFs. Can anyone answer this?
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Quoting from Wikipedia:
PDF/A is an ISO-standardized version of the Portable Document Format (PDF) specialized for use in the archiving and long-term preservation of electronic documents. PDF/A differs from PDF by prohibiting features unsuitable for long-term archiving, such as font linking (as opposed to font embedding) and encryption.[1] The ISO requirements for PDF/A file viewers include color management guidelines, support for embedded fonts, and a user interface for reading embedded annotations.
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To clarify, I meant the differences between it and normal PDFs in a standard paperless workflow not the technical differences.
What benefits do you gain? In his experience what types of documents should be saved in that format vs another? How do you choose between what format is best?
I would have liked some advise, tips, best practices for non-PDF files. There are other formats that need to be managed too. What are the best practices in use by the forum for Office files, for example?
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As it says, PDF/A is for archiving. It is a subset of PDF that disallows certain features that might make the file difficult to read in the future. For instance it requires that all fonts be embedded so the document can be viewed as originally intended even if the font is not available on the system. I would say if you want to be able to examine PDF files 10 years in the future and have them look identical to the way they look today, save as PDF/A. I would say that if they are scanned receipts and statements which are primarily images that PDF/A would offer no advantage.
so far in my cleaning up of stuff it looks like about 80% of the PDFs are things that are of lasting value or importance. Some of the ones I’m trying to OCR now go back 20 years or more. Since I have to redo them (OCR was terrible then) I’m trying to decide if it’s worth the space and effort to find an app that will save them as archival versions sicne I clearly do keep stuff that long.
Since scanned documents are basically images, and when OCRed just have text attached, they won’t have the external links a conventional PDF might have, so just saving as a conventional PDF would work. I looked into my “archive” and the oldest PDFs I’ve got are marked as 1998. They all have embedded fonts and look just fine. Adobe Distiller (used at the time) had an option to embed all fonts which was used for portability.
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Yeah, it sounds like the PDF/A differences mostly apply to documents that were originally created digitally rather than paper documents that have been scanned.
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I haven’t made it through the Field Guide yet, but for sensitive information like financial or medical records is anyone using any sort of password protection for this kind of stuff? If so, what kind of workflow is used (password protect the files? encrypted sparse images? something else?)
David, I was wondering how similar is your Paperless folder structure to your OmniFocus structure? And if they aren’t do you think it makes sense to have similar structures between the applications for simplicity? Great to see the revised paperless but still having a hard time to get the “Save to Action” to work. Seems like I must be missing a step. Thanks for all the great ideas and making it easy to be a copycat ; )
I use encrypted .sparsebundles for archives containing sensitive data. And I keep copies of birth certificate, passport, etc. in 1Password so I can access them while traveling. My Arqbackup offsite backups are encrypted.
I do the same.
I’ve used 1P for this for a while, but only got onto the idea of an encrypted sparsebundle from the guide.
I was going to use Cryptomator this Dec getting organised, but decided to try out the sparsebundle and so far I’m happy with it as a backup.
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If you are not worried someone might access your local machine, DEVONthink encrypts its sync stores. I’m using this as my document repository, including sensitive information, since the stores have to be decoded on my devices to be readable.
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