Import vs. Index for Scanned Documents

[korm]

@jwarthman

I’m open to arguments to the contrary.

“Index” vs. “Import” is like asking “is red velvet cake better than coconut cake”. Unless you’re from Charleston, the answer is “it depends”.

Maybe this thread (and, dozens of others in a similar vein) will help:

Import vs index (again)

I’m new to DT. After spending some time on the forum, it is clear that importing and indexing are both options. But–why would I want to do one and not the other? I’ve not found a list anywhere that says, “If you import, you’ll get (higher performance? automatic indexing? [I’m guessing here])” “But if you index, there is [this cost] and [this benefit].” And I also gather one may choose to index some things, and import others. But I have found nothing to help me decide what to do with which files…

When I scan & OCR a document, the PDF file is automatically imported into the database … Or is there a way to scan and OCR and index, rather than import, the document?

The “OCR and Import” folder action could be adapted to make an “OCR and Index” folder action – but this becomes messy very quickly if you have a hierarchy of folders in the file system that you want to use for storing those OCRd documents.

1. Does DTPO have a way to push the document back out to the file system?

Yes – I won’t repeat what’s already written in the forum, the manual, and tutorials – but look into those source for “move externally”

But, I will repeat my standard advice for this topic: experiment for yourself. Try your new workflow with an indexed database, and then with an imported database, and see which one works. All the advice in the forum on this topic is 99% opinion, including my own. The reason is that there is no “right answer”.