EBME Forums Forums Management Modernisation (Formerly, Controls Assurance) Document Storage Software

Mike,

I do agree with Robert that it is quite straight forward and simple to archive documents these days. I have been using Paperport scanning software all these years and find that this is amongst the best I can find with all-in-one Brother scanner and also comes foc. Paperport can convert scanned file to PDF, JPEG, and many more. You need to index the files for easy retrieval.

If its PC based this may suffice!

If its server based then as Huw said there a ton of freebies out there!

Eddie

At home I've got one of these, its a bit old technology as Axis have gone more into security cameras but it scans documents, converts them to PDF and dumps them on a file server.

Eddie.
No its definitely not Windows.
Computers are good at burying information. If at any point later on you need to access data within a document from a mass of documents in an archive the problem is WHICH DOCUMENT.
Paper allows you to flick through. Windows and Adobe require each individual document to be opened onscreen before you can check the contents. Hence the need for something that will search for text within a batch of files without you opening each file individualy for a manual search.
Geoff.
I'm not aware of Adobe being able to search a batch of closed document files for text. If it could that would definitely be the way to go but I think when people say they are putting their paper documents into Adobe format most of them probably mean they are straight scanning docs in which will produce a non-machine searchable photocopy of the paper doc. Thoss are REALLY hard to search.
Marc

I agree Marc, Windows can be a pain! I have just got into the habit of archiving in a relatively clear fashion, but yeah still not perfect! Vista is better and gives a preview of MS files but as yet no PDF preview! I will look into your suggestion, thanks! Also totally agree that scanning docs into a pure graphic image i.e. Jpg or Bmp is asking for trouble! I would like to see somthing like an "Itunes" for documents! That would be ideal!

Eddie

For searching in many document formats this little thing shows that Google is getting everywhere. Only thing at the price of $2,990 I don't think Mike or anybody else will be rushing out to buy one in a hurry

I'm looking at it right now.

Adobe Reader 7.0 | Search

... select "What word or phrase would you like to search for?"

... select "All PDF documents in ..." (select drive, directory etc.).

... click on [Search] ... works fine.

You then get a list of .pdf files that meet (contain within them) the search criteria. OK, so you have to click on them one by one to call them into the Reader, but (when you do) you are taken straight away to the searched for text, which is high-lighted.

They're also very good at recalling information if you set up (and maintain) a half-decent database!

Thanks for that Geoff. Thats a REALLY good feature in Adobe I completely missed.
In the early 90s I was dead keen on new technology, so I stored all electrical test results (from Rigel 255) in a huge database. The search capabilities were excellent. Alas the tables were so enormous that making any visual use of them was nigh impossible.
I reverted to storing results in the true portable document format, plain text files. It doesn't get any simpler. Now I have thousands of results with files named on Inventory no and a rolling test no (courtesy of our Metron QA90s). If someone asked me how many items failed in the last year and I'd be stuck.
Conversion to PDF looks like a goer but I'd better look before I leap this time.
Marc

You're preaching to the converted there, Marc. I'm very much a plain ASCII man myself.

But, don't you use any database software at all? Access, dBASE, FoxPro, Paradox ... ? If you want, get those text EST results to me and I'll get them converted into .dbf, or whatever. Actually, I would be interested in taking a look at that data anyway, purely from an academic point of view.

Meanwhile, perhaps I'm being a bit thick (?), but I can't really see why you want to store EST results in .pdf. Get them into .dbf, then you can do anything you want (except make pretty pictures, that is).

PS: I'll leave it to others to ponder why you would want to save all those results! Why not simply use a "Pass/Fail" flag?