Any tips on workflow for scanning old paperwork? I got David’s paperless book and have been going through that. Some of it is a little dated though. Downloaded Hazel to see if that can help automate the process.
Thanks.
Not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but here’s what I do:
-
Ask myself: “Do I really need this? If I needed this in the future, could I get it again fairly easily?” If yes, throw it away.
-
Scan and have each “batch” put into a single PDF (so if I am scanning a multi-page document it will still be in the same PDF.
-
Have each PDF run through OCR.
-
Save PDFs with filenames YYYY-MM-DD_HH.MM.pdf in ~/Dropbox/Scanned/
-
Almost never look at scanned PDFs, but feel better because I have them
2 Likes
Thanks, similar to what I was thinking of doing.
Hadn’t thought about your #1 idea though. 
Might save some scanning time if I decide I don’t need it.
So I’ve got a workflow where I’ve used a combination of FOSS CLI tool and Hazel to OCR, rename, and properly file paper documents.
Pretty nifty and easy trick. I use OCRmyPDF with a couple arguments to remove the papers background and straighten it along with OCRing the scans. I’ve set this up through an automator service/quick action.
From there Hazel does the rest automatically.
3 Likes
I calmly agreed with you until I read #5 and spit my drink all over my mac.
2 Likes