Some people may work around this by scanning to a folder on the computer and then dragging the JPGs to a new note, but I prefer to keep things as frictionless as possible and do it all in Evernote.įortunately, newer versions of the Mac and Windows clients give you the ability to merge notes together.
If you are scanning to Evernote, it will create one note for each page, as you can see below. Some of you may have seen this coming a few steps ago, but if you are scanning to JPG, it will create one file for each page. Once the paper is stacked in reverse order, I pop it in the scanner and go. You will see why in a moment, but if I am scanning a three page document, I stack the paper so that page 3 is on top and page 1 is on the bottom. This will sound strange, but when I am scanning handwritten notes, I scan them in reverse order. ScanSnap File option tab Prepare And Scan To Evernote On the File option tab, I set it to scan to JPG. On the ScanSnap Manager Application tab, I choose Scan To Evernote (Note). I use a ScanSnap S1300i, but this will work with any scanner that will scan to JPG. Now, my handwriting is absolutely abysmal, but Evernote has proven remarkably adept at indexing it, so I have switched my workflow to scanning my handwritten Evernote-bound notes to JPG instead of PDF.
For whatever reason, their handwriting recognition only works on images. One of the big keys is, for handwritten notes, to scan the documents as JPGs instead of PDF. I did this for years until I wrote this newsletter issue about Evernote and handwritten notes.
I generally use Evernote to store my notes, and until recently I scanned my notes to PDF, stored them in Evernote, and got rid of the paper. The solution to our paper problem, they write, is not to use less paper but to keep less paper. Guilty as charged, but to me the key is not our use of paper but what we do with it afterwards. This might surprise some of you and I can hear it now – “What? Mr. I have played around with taking notes on my iPad, but more often than not I am re-using the back of paper from around the house. First, I talk to myself a lot, and second, I take a lot of notes. Anyone who has been on the phone with me will know two things about me.