I support some people who use ScanSnap’s and I’ve been wondering what to do about this. Does anyone know if you can run the old 32-bit Manager in a virtual machine on 10.15?
Thanks for a great review. Looks like very powerful software.
I too have the SS Home software, which they provided at no charge.
It is not as intuitive or easy to use as the prior SS software, but it gets the job done.
While I’d like to have the ExactScan SW, $100, or even $70 is just too much for me to pay, given that I have a working solution.
Now if ExactScan were to offer a hefty discount, say 50%, then I would give it serious consideration.
I also have the s1500m and have delayed moving to Catalina because of it. I’m not a very knowable computer user so I have been afraid to delete the ScanSnap software to install ExactScan. What if it didn’t work? I would not know how to go back to what I had and would end up worse off than I started. Obviously you were not concerned, moved ahead and it worked. Thanks for posting as that has given me the courage to start the process! (I hope the improvement of Catalina over Mojave will prove worth all the angst this have given me.)
I use the ScanSnap i1300 and the updated Fuji software works without a problem in Catalina’s latest update. Using it mostly for documents.
Glad it worked out!
Under Mojave, I was able to run ExactScan Pro and ScanSnap Manager side by side; no need to remove one. However, only one could bind to the scanner at a time.
But ExactScan has been adding support for additional ScanSnap scanners over time, so I’m guessing that’s the reason it’s working for you now rather than before.
Thanks!
Yes I agree $100 is pricey, esp if you have a working solution.
I would say it’s worth the price if you either:
-
have a specific workflow you want to accomplish which this does well and so this will save you a ton of time, or
-
your alternative is buying a new scanner.
Thanks for writing.
For one thing, you don’t have to delete anything. Both scanner softwares can exist side by side. You just can’t run both at the same time. That’s how I did my testing.
And you can try ExactScan Pro for free for 14 days to convince yourself it will work before you commit. Then later when you’re truly convinced, you can upgrade to Catalina with no fear.
Thank you. The Fujitsu scanner always worked like a charm. Many pages and rarely a jam. It would be a sin to junk it. Of course, if I ever need to buy a new scanner, it won’t be a Fujitsu. Fool me once…
I appreciate you taking the time to send me the advice. I didn’t realize I could try new software and still retain the old. A great relief.
I used to have a colleague who would hold my hand when I ventured into the computer world but we retired and moved apart. I don’t have a good ear for understanding heavy accented English speakers so I found that phone tech support Is not helpful. (Understatement?)
Gary
I’m thinking of alternatives too. I have an old licence for DevonThink which I could upgrade to the OCR version. I could keep my current scanner, but am not sure how good ABBYY and Devonthink would compare to ExactScan. Can anyone here who has used DevonThink to generate and archive searchable pdfs chip in with some advice? I would appreciate that very much.
I’ve used DEVONthink for eight years now, with thousands of documents. Maybe tens of thousands. Its OCR is superb, as far as I’m concerned. I put in search terms and get a nice lineup of docs, from most to least relevant (or by date or in alphabetical order if I like). It makes me glad I own a Mac!
1 Like
If I’m sticking with Mojave (I have too many other 32-bit apps I need) is there any compelling reason to switch for my S1500M?
I have a Fujitsu ix500. Does anyone have experience with ExactScan on this hardware?
An economical alternative is PDFScanner in the Mac App Store for $18. It autocrops, deskews, OCRs, etc. It works reasonably well with my EPSON all-in-one printer-scanner and let’s you “share” the resulting PDF or a few pages into various apps like Evernote, Dropbox, etc.
But does it work with the older ScanSnap scanners, which is the primary goal here? I can’t find a list of scanners it supports.
But does it work with the older ScanSnap scanners, which is the primary goal here? I can’t find a list of scanners it supports.
Good question!
The product page says it supports any scanner that works with Image Capture.
I just opened Image Capture on my Mac running Catalina, opened my older S1300 ScanSnap scanner to turn it on, and the app still says 0 Devices and No Scanner Connected. So I’m going to take that as a “no”!
But if someone wants to pay the $18 for the product, I’ll be glad to try it out. 
I too was frustrated by Fujitsu wanting me to replace my working S1500M scanner in order to use it with Catalina.
Since I had Parallells software already installed, I just downloaded he Fujitsu software for Windows. For my purposes, it works fine. The only downside for me is the one extra step of copying my scans from the Windows partition back to the Mac side.
Would it work to configure the ScanSnap software in Windows to put the scanned files in a location that’s actually a shared folder between Mac and Windows?
I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks like Fujitsu has added support for some of their discontinued scanners (S1500, S1300, S1100) to MacOS Catalina.
https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/peripheral/scanners/topics/news200625.html
Steve
2 Likes
Wow!
And that is a confusing press release. But it sounds as though they might have a solution for the older ScanSnap models under Catalina if you update their firmware and then juggle the import between two different apps: ScanSnap Manager to scan and ScanSnap Home to do all the post processing.
It would be interesting to know if this works and if it’s clumsy or elegant.
…and why they waited so damn long to come up with a solution??
Big news indeed! @dave1, keep an eye on it and when you can test it, let’s do at least a short article.