ScanSnap vs Document Scanning App

There has been lots of discussions (and praise) for the Fujitsu scanners for document management, and I’ve been one of them. I’m still using an S510M with all the older software running in a macOS VM. It works great, but I usually let the documents all pile up and then spend an hour or two while watching a movie to scan them in a few times a year.

I’m wondering if anyone has switched from a desktop document scanner to a document scanning app (phone or iPad) that also does OCR and what their experience has been like.

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I wouldn’t say that I’ve switched, as no app can beat a fast duplexer like the ScanSnap, but I do use Scanner Pro for scanning from bound materials. I’ve tried a bunch of different apps, and for me it is the best with page detection, OCR, and auto-upload to iCloud.

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Same as Gordon. I use it when dealing with a book. Great for the library.

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I always remember how much time and money I spent on the copy machine trying to copy pages from books in my university library every time I use my iPhone to scan a perfect copy from a book now.

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Like all three other post replies, I use both. My S5100M is a workhorse on my desktop, and when I’m in the field I got in the habit of scanning papers such as agendas (with my markup) and handouts with Scanner Pro as soon as a meeting concluded. From there, the original went into the shredder and all I carried with me was electrons.

Those were the days. Copy machine manufacturers started building features such as book copying routines into their big machines at about the same time as portable doc scanners became available. (I had a couple of those “stick” machines that could be rolled over a page, though they quickly filled up a 16mb thumb drive!)

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I spent a ton copying pages from books too

Town records around here now forbid the use of phones in the vaults. They’d rather us pay $1 for each print off their lasers that are too faint to read. (I still take the pix and give them some money anyway)

Diane

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I switched from my ScanSnap (Evernote edition) to a Doxie Pro, when I moved from Evernote to DEVONthink 3 about a year and a half (or so) ago. The Doxie Pro does an excellent job, and I’m very happy with it. That being said, when I did have Evernote, I used their “Scannable” app on iOS (icon looks like a butterfly), and it worked quite well. Readdle’s PDF Expert offers scan functionality as well, and it’s a two step process to scan to a PDF and then import it into DTTG. I rarely scan documents with my phone, though - I really prefer the convenience of the duplex scanning on the Doxie Pro. If I needed to start scanning with my phone, I’d probably look seriously at Readdle’s Scanner Pro, though - I just don’t need it enough at this point to start using a new app.

I used Readdle’s scanning app for a few years, and then I found this from the creator of drafts: New App: Simple Scan - News & Updates - Drafts Community

One time payment, and I can set destination locations for my scans so as soon as I take the scan, it goes where I know it’s going to be. It also allows for scanning to PDFs or to an email - very flexible.

The Simple Scan app for iPhone / iPad does look like a nice, built for purpose tool without extraneous features. Free trial with in-app purchases.

Be aware that there are two different apps on the Apple App Store with exactly the same name! The app that @sgtaylor5 is recommending is here: Simple Scan by Agile Tortoise and a concise and helpful review is at MacStories - Simple Scan story.

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