3 ms·

I just scan everything and put it on Google Drive. For a long time I used the all-in-one printer's built-in scanner (with ADF), but over the last years started

I just scan everything and put it on Google Drive. For a long time I used the all-in-one printer's built-in scanner (with ADF), but over the last years started I scanning with my mobile phone. On Android I used Google Drive's built-in scanning, but I just switched to an iPhone, so I am now using Genius Scan. Regarding organization, I use a simple folder structure, e.g. /paper/insurances/car, /paper/taxes/2020, /paper/<kid-name>/school/ ... I try to use meaningful names for all documents, e.g. car-insurance-invoice-2020.pdf, so I can identify the right document as first glance. The depth of the folder structure for a file is depends on the number of documents in that category. Unless I misfiled a document, I have no issue finding documents.

causality0 5y ago
Why does Genius Scan work better for you than something like Office Lens?
- tjansen 5y ago
  I am using Google Drive, so Office Lens won't help me. Google Drive on iPhone doesn't have a built-in scanning function (the Android app does). You need a different app for scanning. Genius Scan can export directly to Google Drive, that's why I am using it.
rossng 5y ago
I do roughly the same thing, but I prepend every filename with YYYY-MM-DD for easy searching and sorting. I am able to immediately throw away about 95% of letters, which I find takes away a real mental weight that came before from physically archiving and organising them. I just wish Google would invest the relatively small amount of engineering effort that it would take to make their document scanner fast and accurate. The workflow for quickly scanning a multi-page letter is infuriatingly clunky right now. --- Of course, the best solution is to just move to a country that has solved this problem at a national level. See Denmark and e-Boks, for example.
jjav 5y ago
> I just scan everything and put it on Google Drive In the future if/when google locks you out without recourse, how will that help? I'm surprised to read through the comments so many responses relying on third party cloud storage as the primary location. For anything important, you're best off treating cloud storage as convenient but ephemeral. It may go away any moment for any number of reasons and you might never get it back. Be sure to have anything important in safer storage, whether local backups or just originals stuffed away in boxes.

causality0 5y ago

Why does Genius Scan work better for you than something like Office Lens?

tjansen 5y ago
I am using Google Drive, so Office Lens won't help me. Google Drive on iPhone doesn't have a built-in scanning function (the Android app does). You need a different app for scanning. Genius Scan can export directly to Google Drive, that's why I am using it.

rossng 5y ago

I do roughly the same thing, but I prepend every filename with YYYY-MM-DD for easy searching and sorting. I am able to immediately throw away about 95% of letters, which I find takes away a real mental weight that came before from physically archiving and organising them. I just wish Google would invest the relatively small amount of engineering effort that it would take to make their document scanner fast and accurate. The workflow for quickly scanning a multi-page letter is infuriatingly clunky right now. --- Of course, the best solution is to just move to a country that has solved this problem at a national level. See Denmark and e-Boks, for example.

jjav 5y ago

> I just scan everything and put it on Google Drive In the future if/when google locks you out without recourse, how will that help? I'm surprised to read through the comments so many responses relying on third party cloud storage as the primary location. For anything important, you're best off treating cloud storage as convenient but ephemeral. It may go away any moment for any number of reasons and you might never get it back. Be sure to have anything important in safer storage, whether local backups or just originals stuffed away in boxes.