I may not be thinking about this in the best way. I am trying to organize all my fill and receipts. I set up folders and when I scan in new document I name it , say it is a receipt where it is from and the date of the receipt and then I put it in the folder it belongs. Well two things it takes a lot of time to scan each receipt then name it and date it. Second now that every scan goes to the inbox I have to move every thin I have scanned to the proper folder. If everything is the same type of item then it is easy, but sometimes I have to pick out each item. I am sure that someone has a better system, please help me out. Thanks
Even with the new version of DTPO, this kind of project is quite a challenge, and you’re certainly not alone.
So far I’ve processed about 200 of 800 receipts and business forms previously scanned into my DTPO inbox that we need to prepare our 2008 business taxes. I actually had to stop yesterday because of pain in the back of my right hand. It takes at least 3 mouse clicks to zoom in and several more to scroll to search for and view the dates on these tiny receipts. It’s a double-click to select the date, and even more clicks to position the cursor to paste the selected date in the document’s name. If the entire title isn’t visible after the paste, it’s yet another trip to the 'Show Info" window to edit the title. So in the course of a work session lasting only a few hours, several thousands of mouse clicks isn’t unusual. And all that clicking represents a lot of effort and concentration.
Nevertheless, there are several things you can do to help speed up this process:
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Make sure you’re using some sort of Applescript that attempts to automatically title your documents. You can find an elegant and simple example of one such script Christian wrote posted in this forum.
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Use TextExpander to type in repetitive terms, like “receipt” and “invoice,” for you into your titles.
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Use FastScripts Lite to invoke from the keyboard frequently used scripts to set titles and to append and prepend text to titles. This template shows the following scripts mapped by FastScripts to keys I’ve selected in the top left of my keyboard:
[i]Set Title As
Append | Prepend | Replace | Auto Rename[/i]
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Incidentally, I don’t use the Set Title As contextual menu item provided in DTPO anymore because it makes me crazy having to mouse through the 15 menu items stacked on top of it. The keyboard script works much faster.
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Be sure to use DTPO’s Classify (not Auto-Classify) function so that the AI routines can recommend the best groups in which you can place your documents. I used DTPO for many months until I learned from this forum that it made more sense to let the program suggest groups in which to file documents. That’s because the DTPO help pages are good at identifying features and capabilities, but they’re spotty at best in terms of explaining the best processes in a step-by-step fashion. In fact, here’s the forum post that tipped me off about the value of using Classify:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6597&p=29906&hilit=auto+classify#p29906
I hope that those of you with additional useful suggestions will post them in this thread as well. Meanwhile, the practices I’ve posted above should go a long way towards speeding up and simplifying what might otherwise be a lengthy and challenging project.