| Title: ScanSoft PaperPort 9 | Vendor: ScanSoft | Price: see below |
| Requirements: see below | ||
| Date Published: February 2004 | Reviewer: Steve Costello, B.P.C.A., Inc. | |
Pricing: List $199 for single user, but have seen as low as $99 at software discount sites & retail stores.
PaperPort Office 9 is from ScanSoft (www.scansoft.com), which also has Dragon NaturallySpeaking, OmniForm, OmniPage and other applications. This presentation is for PaperPort Office 9, primarily for use in an office environment, as that is was what was sent for review, they also have PaperPort Deluxe 9, with similar features and abilities for the individual user and starting with $99 list price; both are available on CD or via download from ScanSoft.
I had an older version that came with my Visioneer One Touch scanner and used it to keep my scans organized. The older version saved in MAX only, a proprietary format which to me limited my options and the usability of the software for digitizing my paper files and other scanned items. With this latest version of PaperPort and its ability to scan directly to PDF, I feel that this will be much more useful, in that I will no longer have to export to an image file to have an item readable by software other than PaperPort. That being said, it should be noted that this is fine for a single user like myself for use with a flatbed scanner, but to use in an office environment for the purpose of digital filing and processing, a sheet feeder would be an almost absolute necessity for digital filing of material previously created on paper.
One click creation of PDF files from Microsoft Office documents and Print to PDF from other common MS Windows applications are supported, saving the cost of having to have the full and expensive Adobe Acrobat installed for every user.
Batch processing is supported, enabling quick operations on several items at one time. Included commands such as: Save As, Auto Enhance, Resize, Auto Straighten, Rotate and others.
There are improved scanning features, such as: multi-page and dual sided scanning, sortable names for scanned items.
There is extensive online help, a Knowledge Base and several official and unofficial newsgroups and forums available. Like most software these days, there was no printed manual provided.
The My PaperPort Documents folder and the subfolders are installed by default, in your My Documents folder (if yours is a multi-user system, each user has their own, but the subfolders can be deleted or have other subfolders added at any time. The My PaperPort Documents folder itself can not be deleted or moved, but you can add folders from your own hard drive separately and use them just like the My PaperPort Documents folder.
Documents and photos acquired in PaperPort are called items. Image Items consist of Scanned Documents, Photographs and other digital items, such as PDF, JPEG, TIFF, MAX (PaperPort's own format). Text Items consist of Word Documents (DOC), HTML, Excel Documents (XLS) and other editable text documents created by popular word processing or text based applications PaperPort shows large, clear thumbnails of your documents and photos. Each thumbnail shows you graphically what is in the document, without you having to open the document completely and if the document has multiple pages the ability to scroll through the pages. Each thumbnail also has an icon representing the program the document was created in or is associated with, letting you know right away if it is a Word Document, PDF file, etc.
The normal list, details, large and small icon views are also available of course, but the thumbnail view lets you find visually, which I find easier.
The page view window is a place to view, touch up, and annotate items and is accessed automatically after scanning, if you elect that option, or by clicking on the Page button on the PaperPort Desktop Toolbar. You can rotate, straighten, remove stray dots, erase portions. With photos you can crop, brighten, remove red eye and other simple editing and enhancing chores. You can annotate with lines, highlighting, stamps (including a signature).
If your scanner is TWAIN or WIA compatible, use the Scan pane to bring up the scanner's program to bring images and documents into PaperPort so that you can use its features. If your scanner is not TWAIN or WIA compatible, use the program that came with the scanner and then move the items into PaperPort. Items can be scanned as single or multi-page, and if you have an ADF (Automatic Document Feeder) you can scan two-sided pages, click Scan Other Side, and PaperPort will automatically scan and collate the pages in the correct order.
You can easily add other folders from your Hard Drive or Network Drive to function as PaperPort folders. At the PaperPort Desktop, click Tools, PaperPort Folders, Add, then browse to the folder you want to add to the PaperPort Desktop; the selected folder will appear with a little PaperPort icon.
You can use the Web Capture feature to capture web pages as PaperPort or PDF image items on your PaperPort Desktop. You can then view the page, save it for archiving, index the content, and other tasks. Note: I have been unable to get this feature to work correctly as yet and am awaiting information from ScanSoft at the moment.
There is an Import command, which might be useful for bringing in single files, but I would prefer using the old drag and drop method myself.
PaperPort provides two special print drivers, PaperPort Black & White Image and PaperPort Color Image you can use to print to MAX or PDF format from your other applications directly into PaperPort.
You can drag or cut & paste individual or multiple files in Windows Explorer from non-PaperPort folders to PaperPort folders.
Like in the Scan process, you can download your photos from a TWAIN or WIA compatible camera, or use the camera's photo download program that came with the camera and then drag and drop the photos to PaperPort.
Once you have acquired PaperPort folders and their items, you can copy, move, rearrange or rename the folders, to better group and organize. There is no set way to group and organize, but if you don't have some kind of system that works for you, it will be very hard to locate the information at a later date. PaperPort gives you the ability to color code folders within your PaperPort folders. Available colors are: Black, Blue, Cyan, Green, Magenta, Manila, Red, Yellow or White. The use of colors for different projects or formats, could help you be a little more organized PaperPort lets you assign item properties to PaperPort Image and PDF Image items, which you can then use as search criteria to more easily find items later. You can add a Subject (Comments), Author, Keywords, etc., also PaperPort allows you to assign the same keywords to multiple items. If you assigned properties to your items, as described earlier, you can use the PaperPort Search Pane's File Search. This search will be based on item properties only, Name, author or keyword.. PaperPort also has a SimpleSearch indexing feature, that uses PaperPort's OCR software to extract & copy textual content from your items and creates a database of the words or phrases and would return all items matching your criteria input, Name, author, keyword and the text content entered into the Containing text box. I have used such indexing before with other programs and have found that for me it is too time consuming and processor intensive to be much use to me.
PaperPort also can create PDF Searchable Image files that can then be indexed and searched outside of PaperPort. This is only supported of you have OminPage 11 or higher installed with PaperPort and has not been tested, as OmniPage is not installed on the equipment being used here. You can use all of the Windows Search capabilities as usual.
PaperPort installs a Send To bar that has all your installed programs set up to accept items dropped onto their icons. The bar is very adjustable and you can add or remove those applications you don't want. You can tune the options so that the item will use a certain format when sent to a specific applications and you can change the way the program icons appear, to suit the way you work. Email by dragging to your email program on the PaperPort Send To bar. Fax by dragging to your Fax application. OCR by dragging to your word processing application.
Use the Save As command to convert from one format to the other. Use the Duplicate as PaperPort Image command to convert text and image items to PaperPort Image items (MAX). Use the Duplicate as PDF Item command to convert text items to PDF Image items. Note: Select more than one item at a time to convert multiple items to a new format at the same time. Form Typer is a PaperPort program that lets you easily fill out forms, such as registration, medical, and any other form with blank fields. Scan the form (only works with PaperPort Image [MAX], black and white, 300 to 400 dpi), drag to the Form Typer program on the Send To bar. Form Typer will analyze, recognize blank areas and create blank fields for the data. Form Typer will underline each field in color. Reposition, remove fields or insert new fields as necessary, then enter the data to complete the form, save it with another file name, to prevent overwriting your original form, then print or email the completed form. With PaperPort Office 9, you can easily convert your paper documents into digital format and efficiently organize your information. This is not for everyone, due to the expense of the application and necessary equipment to properly convert the paper documents to digital format, but would definitely be well worth the expense in a small office or home office environment. I will have to do a lot more research on the legalities of the subject, but in my opinion it is a lot safer and easier to deal with digital documents than a lot of hard to find paper documents.