Scanning paper files

[Greg44]

Dilemma

I have lots of paper files I would like to dump, but most are of years of work on different family tree projects. Family historians are obsessed with documentation and just in case we've got to proof something - or find conflicting information, we save and save. Well now I ready to clear some space, I would really like to scan and save it all to a flash drive and toss the files :0!

My home scanner is SUPER slow, but at work our high speed copier scans them to my computer in a multipage pdf file - in a split second. I could then save it to a drive and be done with it.

My question is ease of retreiving those pages and how many pages to a file so it doesn't take so long to load up, etc.

How do you organize your scanned files? :help:

[Selah]

I just scan them with my HP all-in-one printer/scanner/copier and arrange them in folders in my "My Scans" file on my computer. My method is slow, but you could always use the work machine to do the scanning, load it on a flashdrive, then upload the same documents to your home computer. It shouldn't take very long if you have a fairly modern computer. The size of the file itself doesn't matter too much when you are just looking at it...it's only if you're trying to email someone a file that your email service might balk at the size of the file. I use AOL and they don't like large attachments in emails, so sometimes I have to use my husband's Hotmail account to send or receive large (i.e. PDF files with more than twenty pages) files.

In terms of organizing my scans on my computer, I make great use of folders and sub-folders, and label them by topic. E.g. one large folder called "Taxes," then sub-folders for each year, then sub-folders within each one for each category (home office, travel, housing, annual return), etc.