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General discussion

Scanner question

Jun 16, 2010 6:18AM PDT

I have tons of paper files that I want to archive on computer and get rid of the paper. We are an insurance agency that will be merging with another and moving into their office. After the merger, we will be using their existing document systems, so I'm not concerned with integration. I'm more concerned with time, as there are about 50 drawers of files that need to be archived in just a few months. I just want to be able to get all our files onto a hard drive (then shred) so I don't have to move and store them. Is it as simple as buying a good scanner and saving each client file as one individual PDF? I don't think I need anything fancier than that. If I want to view something from that client, I can pull up that PDF and search it, not much different than getting out his paper file and flipping through. If later I need to break out specific pages from a client's file, I can always save them as a separate smaller PDF.

I have little to no experience with this stuff. Am I missing anything? Will this idea work for me? Any other advice?

Discussion is locked

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Possible solution
Jun 29, 2010 1:54PM PDT

You can try checking out http://www.mcburrz.com/pdfcreatorsuite.html to see if that meets your needs. It is a simple PDF Creator that would allow you to print all of your files to PDF once you scan them to your computer. In addition, you could probably set up an autosave feature to make it a breeze where each time you scan and print the file, it will automatically save the time, date, etc so you don't need to enter it each individual time. They are extremely helpful to their customers, so I would suggest contacting them for additional info if you're interested. They might at least be able to point you in the right direction of finding another solution if that doesn't work!

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Make the choice
Jun 29, 2010 11:02PM PDT

No matter what you do, you *WILL WANT TO STORE PHYSICAL FILES* until you're assured they are no longer needed.

There are various .PDF pgms. or actual Abode brand itself that when scanning stores it as it is seen. These files placed on HD can be duplicated as data to yet another HD for safekeeping. Again, this is all about saving data and it doesn't hurt to do this properly, otherwise results can be lacking. I realize the constrains you're under but if the data becomes lost, no one will be happy. Of course, there are I'm sure services in your area, that do this for some ungawdly fee as well. The whole .PDF side of things is basically what many offices do already, so don't rush this as it will be your new basic storage filing system, so cost shouldn't be a hindrance here. Wink

tada -----Willy Happy

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microfiche
Jul 1, 2010 12:19PM PDT

I used to be a police officer and all of our reports had to saved as once generated they are government property. My old department used to send them out to be put onto microfiche yearly. We then had a contract high security shredding company come and shred the paper files.

The plus side to doing this is the microfiche drums or cassettes (or whatever their called) take up very little room yet hold lots of reports. You can print them out and they would look like the originals. The down side is you have to invest in a specialized machine to read the microfiche's.

There are also several contract companies that will archive your documents for you. I would strongly consider doing this as you are talking about a lot of time and computing power to scan every document then convert it to pdf and store it however you desire. The process is simple but when you got 50 drawers full of files that is a lengthy, time consuming process. Do you have the manpower to devote to that task? 1 or 2 employees working full time would probably take a month or more to scan and convert that many documents.