Going paperless

[dimeotane]

Lets talk about the paperless office at home or work! Have any good tips or ideas to share? Do you love or hate the whole idea? Are you totally 'paperless' already? It's such a major change in the way we do things, after a lifetime of paper documents. What are your thoughts?

 

[AZgl1500]

I have done the "Paperless" thing since about the time that MSDOS 3.3 showed up, and I totally rely on it. I still have all of the old Hard Drives out of all of the Old computers that died on me.
They are labeled as to contents and dates removed from service.

Paper is two things at the same time. Insecure unless you have a lockable storage vault.

Impossible to find what you want, 5 years later unless you are one of those OCD types who absolutely MUST file everything precisely in a specific order ( which I am not ) ... ie, the Military top down approach... but which I do on the computer so I can find it later.

I save all documents on the PC, if a "printable copy" is the only way the website offers it, I do two things:

• I do a "Save Page As" which will save the entire page and all referenced links as HTML5 files and folders.
• I also do a "Print" but I have CutePDF installed and I choose that as the Printer which will then create a PDF file for you to save..... ( some high security documents won't allow CutePDF to function )
• as a Backup if the two previous attempts totally fail ( rare, but does happen ) I do Screen Saves of the document, page by page.

The screen saves: in Windows it is ALT-PrtScrn which places the monitor's screen into the 'clipboard buffer'.
Then I use the Windows native MSPaint.exe program to paste that screen into and then I save that page with a distinctive name. If more than one page, the following pages get a number behind them.

Page1
Page2
Page3

and so forth.

I can go back 10 years and pull up a copy of my IRS Tax Report "as filed" in less than a minute.
Can you do that with a paper filing system?
And, is that paper filing system as secure as my PC is?

and on the matter of backups, does that paper have a copy saved somewhere in a different physical location? fires happen sometimes.

I suggest that 99.98% of the population will say no.

 

[AZgl1500]

One more thing I do.....
I install Google Desktop Search...

Hit the Esc Key twice quickly and up pops a search bar. Type in some text and wait a bit.

if what you want to see if not in the 1st three lines, click on View in Browser....
that will give you a list of everything on your hard drive that matches the search term.

One Caveat: when you first install Google Desktop Search; I advise you do it before you go to bed, leave the computer on, and leave it be... it is going to be extremely busy for a while.

but, it is also a "real time" thing that will pause when you are using the computer, and then it will resume when you have left it alone for a while.

I am one of those who have not turned OFF a computer since I bought one.
I turn off the monitor, or use the Monitor Sleep Function.

You have far fewer hard drive failures if you just leave them running.

here is a pix of Google Desktop Search looking for MSPaint.exe
once you find it, right click on it, and paste it to your Startup Menu

.

 

[LizMac]

It gets easier and easier to go paperless especially with the rise of tagging as a feature for quicker searches. I love that I'm able (mostly) to be able to keep files, lists, forms etc, from phone to computer even though I use different systems (Android and Mac). I'm not 100% paperless, I do confess to being a serial "doodler" and so I sometimes like write things down on paper so that I can draw/doodle. If only for that.

 

[mikedt]

One more thing I do.....
I install Google Desktop Search...

Hit the Esc Key twice quickly and up pops a search bar. Type in some text and wait a bit.

if what you want to see if not in the 1st three lines, click on View in Browser....
that will give you a list of everything on your hard drive that matches the search term.

One Caveat: when you first install Google Desktop Search; I advise you do it before you go to bed, leave the computer on, and leave it be... it is going to be extremely busy for a while.

but, it is also a "real time" thing that will pause when you are using the computer, and then it will resume when you have left it alone for a while.

I am one of those who have not turned OFF a computer since I bought one.
I turn off the monitor, or use the Monitor Sleep Function.

You have far fewer hard drive failures if you just leave them running.

here is a pix of Google Desktop Search looking for MSPaint.exe
once you find it, right click on it, and paste it to your Startup Menu

.View attachment 98368

I have Spotlight which does pretty much the same thing:

Find most use when searching through my rather large e-book textbook library.

 

[svim]

I don't have a comment on whether paper or paperless is best for your situation, but all I will say about a paperless office is the importance of backups.
Always, always have at least one set of duplicates of everything, two or more is better -- along with the original working documents/files keep one copy on a dedicated server in your office, a second copy in some cloud-based solution, and maybe even a third copy that goes to something like removable, external disks that get regularly rotated offsite. There's some overhead involved keeping everything in sync (i.e. a file with editing changes made by more than one person or collaborative editing in real-time) but that's an important aspect too.

 

[dimeotane]

@ AZgl1500 I'll have to look into google desktop search. Kinda freaks me out thinking about Google Corp indexing all the contents of my personal machine. Although from what I've read about Windows 10 that's looking like one big privacy violation as well.

... all I will say about a paperless office is the importance of backups. ..

This is a very important point! And a good topic for further discussion when going paperless. Right now I've got a portable 1TB usb 3.0 Seagate set for continuous backup of my digital documents folder, because I'm doing a lot of scanning in right now of all kinds of documents and then shredding them.

 

[svim]

I'll have to look into google desktop search. Kinda freaks me out thinking about Google Corp indexing all the contents of my personal machine. Although from what I've read about Windows 10 that's looking like one big privacy violation as well.

There are desktop search alternatives to look into:
http://lifehacker.com/5988004/five-best-desktop-search-applications

As for cutting off Win10 from phoning home, good luck with that. This is utility is pretty good though, at least until Microsoft pushes out a future update to undermine it:
http://www.ghacks.net/2015/12/01/w10privacy-update-brings-even-more-privacy-options-to-windows-10/

 

[AZgl1500]

I don't have a comment on whether paper or paperless is best for your situation, but all I will say about a paperless office is the importance of backups.
Always, always have at least one set of duplicates of everything, two or more is better -- along with the original working documents/files keep one copy on a dedicated server in your office, a second copy in some cloud-based solution, and maybe even a third copy that goes to something like removable, external disks that get regularly rotated offsite. There's some overhead involved keeping everything in sync (i.e. a file with editing changes made by more than one person or collaborative editing in real-time) but that's an important aspect too.

I commented on that, but it got buried in my very long post.... I have a minimum of 3 copies. all in different places. there is only a very few things that I will keep the original paperwork on.

• Taxes
• Property Deeds
• Titles to property items: cars, trucks, motorcycles, etc...

everything else is sent to a PDF and the paper is shredded.

 

[Mabozo]

I don't think I could go totally paper less. Sadly where I live still a lots of documents come in printed form, and still many documents need a physical signature. You can scan it after wards buts it will be printed first. Also taking notes even in on the best tablet with a stylus is still awkward for me. I like my notes, and my doodles But, certainly, we use dramatically less paper than 10 years ago, though going completely paperless is still far far away.

 

[zuben el genub]

I use both systems. Since I have both older versions of Photoshop and Illustrator, I don't need MS products. Illustrator will write PDF files. I will pay bills electronically, but I keep some receipts in paper. Electronic payments can be lost, and I can always fax in or digitize the paper receipt. I print out the receipt for both credit card and cell phone. The others are filed electronically.

 

[Hadron]

I'm pretty paperless. Could be completely so at work if the finance people would stop insisting on paper .

I have always structured my work files in a set of trees, so I can usually guess pretty well where to look for stuff even without desktop search (for which I'll either use Spotlight on the Mac, or a few "ls" or "grep" commands usually suffices as I generally known roughly where I will have kept things.

As for how successful, most of the reports and files on my shelves are over 15 years old (occasionally I'll pick up a printed copy of a particularly significant report), and I do not have a filing cabinet because I told the building manager I didn't want one. To be honest I've never been a paper user.

These days I even have a Galaxy Note tablet to doodle on

 

[AZgl1500]

I don't think I could go totally paper less. Sadly where I live still a lots of documents come in printed form, and still many documents need a physical signature. You can scan it after wards buts it will be printed first. Also taking notes even in on the best tablet with a stylus is still awkward for me. I like my notes, and my doodles But, certainly, we use dramatically less paper than 10 years ago, though going completely paperless is still far far away.

I bought a Neat brand portable document scanner many years ago....
the little hand held scanner takes single sheets of paper, so it is not the "Be all to End all" as some things you need a Flat Bed scanner for..... I used to have one of those, the HP 'all in one" printer it was in crapped out...

That little Neat Scanner has done a terrific job for me.....
but: a Caveat for users of that thing. Do NOT allow it to store your documents... it is terribly hard to manage stuff with their system....
What I do, is have it set to Default to Scan to a PDF file to my PC hard drive... that way, I have a permanent record of the document.

I store everything in a Top Down hierarchical manner similar to the Military system of drilling down deeper to get what you want.
ie, C:\DATA\John\Medical\Hospital\Billings\...... pdf file here

doing it that way, I can find my tax records from 10 years ago in a flash...

c:\data\TurboTax\2005\1040 as filed.pdf

for me, it is the perfect system. anyone wants a paper copy, they can damn well print it out for themselves.

I save everything in High Resolution Color, so ink signatures are valid and admissible in court.

.
.

 

[zuben el genub]

I've always had a decent scanner attached to all computers. I scan photos - some like my own to base cartoon like drawings on in Photoshop. Also used to print on fabric for making custom T-Shirts or to digitize machine embroidery.

Photoshop/Illustrator print-outs control all the scanned material. I won't use any device that won't work my way.

The Vulcan saves his hard drives.

 

[Hadron]

My phone camera's main function is as a portable document scanner