MARCH 2012 IN
RICK ASTER’S WORLD

Time to Scan

If you have been waiting for the right time to convert paper files to digital data, now is the time.

I say this after seeing the speed of the flatbed scanner I bought last month. It was not expensive, costing slightly over $100, hardly anything compared to the value of the space a filing cabinet takes up.

Yet it is fast. It scans a letter-sized business document in about five seconds. It literally takes the scanner less time to scan a page than it does for you to type a name for the resulting file. Realistically, you can scan and name three to four pages per minute. Or to put it another way, in the time it takes to look at all your files and know what you have, something you should do every couple of years anyway, you could scan them all.

The main reason to go from paper to digital is to save space and reduce the bulk of your physical setup. Taking a file cabinet out of an office can give you more room to work. When it is time to move, it is easy to move two or three DVDs containing scans, but it can take hours to pack and move the contents of a file cabinet. And there are other advantages. Security is the most important. In a disaster, paper files are easily lost. Digital files, though, can be copied, with a copy stored somewhere else, making it unlikely that a single disaster could wipe out your files. Scanning can also save time, particularly with incoming documents. With a fast scanner, it takes less time to scan a pile of receipts and letters than it does to sort them out and file them in paper form.

I scanned my old files on a much slower scanner five years ago. I have been scanning incoming receipts, bills, and letters ever since. With my new, faster scanner, I will scan whatever remaining papers I can find, along with booklets and photos.

If you’re about to start scanning, I offer these suggestions:

• Some documents are meant to be used in their original paper form. Keep originals of certificates, licenses, signed contracts, and similar documents. But scan them also.
• Don’t scan documents that you really should be throwing away.
• Since you’re going through a lot of paper at once, collect it for recycling.
• Don’t use the full resolution of the scanner. For a business document, 150 dpi (dots per inch, or ppi, pixels per inch) is about right.
• Save documents as PNG or JPG files. These are compact image file types that your web browser will recognize.
• Make a backup or an offline copy, such as a DVD, of the files after you scan them.
• Name the files as you go along.
• Scanner software may include OCR software that can convert the scanned image to text. Use this cautiously if you use it at all; OCR is not always very accurate. Always keep the original scan image.

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