Scan to Evernote: Fujitsu ScanSnap

May 7th, 2009

Some time ago we published a post explaining how to scan directly into Evernote for Mac. In this post, I’ll explain how to set up the Fujitsu ScanSnap to work with Evernote for Windows.

Fujitsu ScanSnap

We’re big fans of the Fujitsu ScanSnap for a bunch of reasons: it scans both sides of a multipage document, auto-rotates and discards blank pages, OCRs the text, and, most importantly, can be set to deposit the resulting PDF into Evernote. It has become an indispensable part of my workflow. Every document I have goes through my ScanSnap into Evernote before heading into the recycling bin.

Setting up your ScanSnap

  1. Right click on the ScanSnap manager icon in the task manager and select ‘SCAN Button Settings’ (make sure that the ‘Use Quick Menu’ is not checked)
  2. In the ‘Applications’ tab, click ‘Add or Remove’, then click ‘Add’ in the next pop-up window
  3. Add Evernote by clicking the ‘Browse’ button and navigating to Evernote.exe (in most cases it is in C:\Program Files\Evernote\)
  4. Type ‘Evernote’ for the Application Name and click OK. Be sure to select ‘Evernote’ in the application drop down menu.
  5. In the ‘File Option’ tab, select PDF as the format and check the ‘Searchable PDF’ option (if available). Click OK.
 Pic. 2: ScanSnap Settings

Now, left-click on the ScanSnap Manager icon – you should see Evernote as the selected destination – if this is the case – you are all set up. From now on, whenever you scan a document, it will go into Evernote.

You can also use the Fujitsu ScanSnap with Evernote on your Mac. Steps are almost identical and DocumentSnap has a great blog post explaining how to set that up.

Scanning Handwritten Notes

The Fujitsu Scansnap does a great job OCR’ing printed text, but it does not handle handwritten text. Evernote can help. If you are scanning pages of handwritten notes, our image recognition can make them searchable. To take advantage of this, set up a second profile in the ScanSnap manager to scan your documents as JPEG images, instead of PDFs. Use this profile when you want to archive your notebooks and scribbles.

Using other Windows scanners with Evernote

The instructions vary greatly depending on the scanner and the scanning software you might be using, but there are a couple of general tips that should help you set up your Windows scanner to send to Evernote:

  1. Find your scanner settings (located in the Control Panel, or a stand-alone program)
  2. Look for a way to configure the hardware buttons on the scanner
  3. Set a button to launch Evernote, by pointing it to the Evernote.exe (in most cases it is in C:\Program Files\Evernote\)
  4. Save the settings and try it.

Evernote knows what to do with files sent to it from a scanner, such as images or PDFs. If Evernote is not running, it will launch and create a new note from the received file.