Do you think my plan will be successful?

Question

I don't like getting rid of paper documents. I have credit card bills going back about 20 years, and even notes from my college math classes going back to the early 1980's.

I plan on buying a scanner with a 50 page document feed that lets you scan directly to PDF files, in order to scan all of my bills and papers into PDF files and get rid of perhaps 10 boxes of paper and store everything on CDs.

Some of the papers were organized into manilla folders about 5 years ago, but I never finished. Most of the papers are unorganized in piles, some in boxes and some not. I think it is easy enough to stick the papers in the scanner and convert them to files, but I'll still need to separate the big PDF files into smaller files (I want one file for each bill/statement) and sort them out. It may be easier for already sorted papers, but if I have 50 different bills on 50 pages this could take time. Also wondering if I could have a problem if not all pages are 8.5'' x 11".

I’m planning on buying a Fujitsu Scansnap S510 ($402.97 minus $50 rebate at www.pcnation.com). It had great reviews. One review said that all pages scanned together have to be the same size, but this shouldn’t be much of a problem.

For Description And Reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/Fujitsu-Scansnap-Color-Image-Scanner/dp/B000RUOW66/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1196561692&sr=8-1

To benz300coupe: You are absolutely correct, but I have a problem in that I don’t like to get rid of anything. Given the fact that I'm saving this junk no matter what, I’d rather have a shoebox full of CDs or DVDs instead of 10 large boxes (letter size) of paper. I think this undertaking is easier than curing my psychological problem. Plus, if I ever wanted to look at a bill (old or recent) it would be a lot easier to find.

Answer 1

I should charge for this advice...JK.

First, this will be a big project. (2-3 weekends?)

Second, the most time consuming task will be organizing your records. Whether it means organizing them before you start scanning or organizing them as digital images after you're done scanning; either method will be time consuming.

Third, the physical handling of your paper records will take up much more time than the actual scanning. Removing staples, straightening documents and edges. Arranging the paper into neat stacks so that they don't jam in the document feeder (ADF).

Lastly, aside from the occasional jams, scanning will be a breeze. AND YOU CHOSE THE RIGHT MAKE for the scanner. In my opinion, Fujitsu document scanners are the best.

You might want to go to an arts and craft supply store and get some crystal clear mylar sheets/rolls. You may need these to make document carriers (sheet protectors) in which you can place fragile or small documents (e.g., store receipts, charge slips, etc.) and then feed through your scanner without fear of jamming or tearing.

DOCUMENT HANDLING
I would organize the documents before I scan them. For example: group all Phone bills by year and in order of month. 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, etc. from January - December for each year.

The reason is that you have the option of automatically incrementing your file names. By grouping your phone bills by year and then in order of month, you can name the first batch "1999" and the first scan of that batch would be "_01" which would correspond to "1999_January"--the file name would be "1999_01.tif", the second one would be "1999_02.tif" and so on.

(OH BY THE WAY although the scanner you're looking at has the ability to save the scans as PDF, I recommend saving them as TIFF image files and then, if or when you need to, you can convert them to PDF. For archiving, which is what you're doing, save them as TIFFs.)

SCANNING THE DOCUMENTS
When you scan the documents, you'll have the option of saving them as individual image files or of saving them as multipage image files. I recommend saving them as single-page image files. They remain much more versatile in this way. For example, some image viewing programs, and Adobe Acrobat, will have problems displaying or converting multipage image files.

Scan in bi-tonal (2-bit) black and white...unless you MUST have color.

Scan them in at 400dpi. It's the industry standard for archival of documents. You can scan at higher resolutions if you'd like but no less than 400dpi. After all, you'll be destroying these when you're done so get a good scan of them before that happens.

Save the bi-tonal images as TIFF using CCITT Group 4 compression (or simply "Group 4" compression, Group 3 if 4 isn't available). This yields the smallest file size. Drive storage isn't an issue nowadays but the file size may present an issue should you later need to email the file. If your scan is a grayscale or color scan, then save it as a TIFF LZW compressed, if the option is available, if not, then save as a JPG.

Feel free to contact me via Yahoo! mail if you'd like additional information.

Answer 2

Your plan sounds like it will help you organize all of your documents a lot better. Come to think of it, that's what I should do with mine!

Here's what I'd do: if you have bills or anything that is more than one page long, scan them all and put them in it's own folder on your computer. For the next month's bill, scan them all and put in another folder. For example, if you had 2 month's phone bills that were 3 pages long each, save them on your PC like this:

C:\documents\phone bills\November2001\page1.pdf
C:\documents\phone bills\November2001\page2.pdf
C:\documents\phone bills\November2001\page3.pdf
C:\documents\phone bills\December2001\page1.pdf
C:\documents\phone bills\December2001\page1.pdf
C:\documents\phone bills\December2001\page1.pdf

If all the pages are smaller than 8.5 X 11", it won't matter. If they're bigger, you can maybe just fold them and scan both parts or something. Most scanners you can buy I think will accept paper that is larger that that size anyways.

Be sure to recycle all your old documents. Probably want to shred them as well.

Answer 3

No disrespect intended - but what's the point? For tax purposes, anything that's older than 7 years is irrelevant. You'll also have to spend a lot of time indexing or labelling each PDF to make it easy to find so it sounds like a lot of time spent for little benefit.

Answer 4

I have a friend who did the same thing -- he scanned all the documents (using a nice scanner that lets you feed in a bunch of documents and it does the work) and then burned the data to DvDs.

Answer 5

You have a well thought out plan that should work out just fine. Below is a link that talks about storage media life times. AKA how long will it last, also keep in mind software changes faster than the storage media life time