When you are preparing to move, you can face yourself with one Very Paper documents. Holiday cards, leases, letters, tax documents, notes, doodles – whatever it is – can actually stack over time. If your choice is only “keep” or “garbage”, it can be difficult to let go, even if you choose one of the more responsible methods for getting rid of your luggage. Digitalization makes these decisions easier by adding a third option: create a virtual version to keep safe and say goodbye to physical paper.
These days, digitization requires only a smartphone or a tablet, but you will want to adapt the process by reducing the risk of data loss.
Decide what to do with your papers
In my experience – and I have been digitizing boxes on the boxes of documents for the last six months – there are only a few types of records after creating a digital version. These are the original government documents, a will or a current lease -like legal agreement, items that can lose your form or meaning when reduced images on screen, and anything that you want to display in your home.
Of course, there will be exceptions. Maybe you decide to toss every birthday card, but send your grandmother before dying. Or maybe you just feel to keep the hard copies of the document better, even if the IRS says it is usually fine Scrap them after three yearsyou do you.
What do you have to start
After deciding the fate of your documents, you can work. At least, you will need a flat, clean surface like a mobile device and tabletop. While it is enough to work technically, I also recommend a computer, your devices (such as cable, aircraft, or cloud storage), image editing software and a way to transfer files between at least a backup drive.
If you have a really heavy pile of papers, you can consider buying or borrowing a scanner to help. A scanner that comes with a feeder, can scan a bunch of documents at a time rather than one at a time, and most scanners can directly save images in your computer or your cloud storage. Home scanners that are mostly for documents can run from $ 100 to $ 500 depending on their features and capacity. Scanners handling high quality images can cost significantly.
Personally, after using the scanner in domestic, professional and academic settings, I think they are Great for archival workBut most people are overcomes for digitization needs. I have used my phone for my own digitization project and have no regrets.
Digitizing with your phone camera
There are three easy ways to capture the digital image of any paper using your phone: with your camera app, a built-in scanning app, or third-party scanning app. Whatever I use is suitable, it depends on what my plans for digital copy are.
When you are most familiar with your camera app, this lesson is not very good for documents and especially cumbersome for multi-page. That said, I like to use my normal camera app for cards and arts because it creates editable image files that I can organize with tags.
Meanwhile, scanning apps, usually only PDF output. I use this method for lessons like leases and financial records. Both iOS and Android include the underlying scanning tools that are quite capable of converting any document into PDF. On Android phone, you use the drive app; With an iPhone, you can use files or notes apps. All these allow you to catch and wait only on paper; The app outlines the page and automatically creates a file.
There are also many third-party apps that provide additional features to capture, edit and store PDF. If you want more options than drives, notes, or files, it may be useful to find out what is there.
The best way to digitize images
Lie your document to a well -burnt location without any shade. Lose weight if necessary, but try to block anything important.
A encyclopedia knowledge of the camera angles will not matter here. Without putting a shadow on the page, flat your phone and place levels on your document. I recommend to save your pictures immediately to save time and make images easier to see in preview when you are organizing. If you are capturing the card, you can cover the cover and interior separately, then use image edit software to combine them into a file.
If you have created a store of digital documents on your phone and are thinking about leaving them there – no. It is like standing and believing that it will not go away. To reduce the risk, transfer your digital documents to computer, a backup drive and / or cloud storage. Despite the progress in storage technology, the data loss still occurs, and it is safe to keep its important files in at least two places, if something happens to one of them.
If you use Google Drive to scan your documents, you have already backed them to the cloud. To send those documents to another device, in which your Google Drive is not accessible, you can download them using them Google takeout,
If you use files or notes on iOS, you can check to ensure that your files are going back to iCloud setting ,Your name, IcloudIf you are using files and want to send those files elsewhere, then tap Three dots Top right, hit chooseSelect the files you want to move, and touch Share icon The bottom to the left (a box with a point arrow with one upward point). If you use notes, tap on the note you want to move and choose Share noteThen choose your favorite sharing method and ship them out.
No matter where your files are – a computer, mobile device, or cloud storage – you should really arrange them so that you can find them later. If you have a system that already works for you, great. But if you need a strategy, I recommend making top-level folders such as “cards” and “records” that describe the most wide categories within your collection. Within these, make more specific folders such as “leases” and “identity”. When you reach the bottom-level folders, where actual files live, try to name them continuously. If you really want to work hard, you can add tag and other metadata to your files.
It is important to understand that the goal here is not to completely eliminate anything that can be considered chaos – it is to find a efficient solution to manage items that we live our lives. It is okay catching meaningful items and evaluating the measured of their value from time to time. After all, drowning in a sea of ​​paperwork can be bad, but living a life devoid of meaning and souvenirs can be worse.
