Home Office: A New Way to Tame Your Paper Tiger

My desk was a paleontologist's dream--stacks of paper, some of it from the Pleistocene epoch (well, okay, maybe just since 1995). But a super scanning program helped me clear away several strata without lifting a shovel. Folks, I haven't been this productive in years. I also have a nifty scanner freebie and a couple of scanner buying suggestions to share with you.

When was the last time you really got excited over software? You will again once you try ScanSoft's PaperPort Deluxe 9, a versatile tool for managing and manipulating paper and electronic documents, images, PDFs, faxes, and other files. For the first time in ages, my desk is clear--I've scanned in hundreds of scraps of paper, given each a file name and a few keywords, and stored them in PaperPort folders on my PC.

Once you've scanned a file into PaperPort, you can clean, straighten, or otherwise massage it (handy for faxes), even to the extent of annotating it and attaching sticky notes. PaperPort's optical character recognition is terrific for most jobs. I scanned a smudgy faxed contract and ran the OCR app on it--and after 2 minutes of spelling checking for OCR errors, I had a perfect document. I scan and fill in forms using the program's Form Typer; and I use PaperPort's Copy to Text feature to select a region of text on a paper document, scan the region, convert it to digital, and then pop it onto the clipboard for pasting into any other document. Nifty, no?

I keep uncovering new ways to use the program: If I ask, PaperPort will OCR each document, add the words to an index, and let me perform quick searches. I did that to dozens of family recipes, making it easy for my wife to organize and retrieve them quickly. Ditto for all of my expense receipts. After scanning, I burn copies of critical papers--like passports and birth certificates--onto a CD.

Scan and Deliver

New in version 9 is the ability to save or scan any document--say, an e-mail message or a photo--as a PDF file. For example, I can send monthly Quickbooks invoices to my editor as PDFs and know he'll be able to read them (and argue over my expenses). I can annotate and e-mail the PDF docs right from the program, too.

PaperPort supports over a hundred scanner models, so it likely will work with your scanner. Go to the company's Hardware Compatibility List for a list of compatible products.

As much as I like PaperPort, I dislike two things about ScanSoft's policies. First, you get just one free phone call for an incident; subsequent calls are $20 a pop. E-mail support, at $10 per incident, is a relative bargain. Second, there is no trial version, though the company does offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Quick tip: Not every home office has a photocopier--but if you have a scanner and a printer, you do. I use ICarbon, a free tool that lets me fire a scanned document to my printer in seconds. ICarbon loads fast, and its black-and-white, gray-scale, and color presets make the conversion a breeze. Download a copy from IDev.

Finally, some scanner-buying advice: If you plan to scan more text pages than photos, and you work in a small office (mine feels like a converted broom closet), get a $190 Visioneer Strobe XP100. A little bigger than a ruler, it weighs less than 0.75 pound. If you want to experience the ultimate in portability, try tucking the scanner into your jacket pocket. The Strobe comes with PaperPort, and its 600-dpi resolution and 36-bit internal color meet 90 percent of my needs.

Unfortunately, the Strobe can't scan books, high-quality photographs, slides, or negatives. To do that, you need a flatbed scanner. My choice is HP's Scanjet 5500c ($275 street), which scans at 2400 dpi and supports 48-bit color. The Scanjet uses USB 2.0, so when it's connected to a USB 2.0-equipped PC, it scans fast. This model has an automatic feeder for photos, as well as an adapter for scanning 35mm negatives and slides.

One more scanner benefit: Think of the money you'll make selling your old file cabinets on EBay!

SUMMARY

PaperPort Deluxe 9 Price When Tested: $99 Current Prices, if available