I have often read that Paperport is one-of-a-kind software, or nearly so. But it doesn't sound so unique compared with the some of the software discussed here. Over at Amazon, it says it helps you "to scan, organize, find and share photos, paper and electronic documents." But it costs about $165, discounted, and gets very mixed user reviews. It looks to me like it does nothing more than allow you to sort PDF's and scanned image files into folders. But that can't be what sets it apart. What does? Has anyone tried it? Does it do things that none of the software here--like Ultra Recall--does?

Thanks,
Gary

I ought to say straight away that I don't have Paperport. But I did monitor the yahoo Paperport group a year or two ago because I thought - in pursuit of the paperless office - I would purchase it. I wanted to put all my key paper documents on to disk and index them ( a key part of Paperport's USP is that it creates searchable PDFs).

The yahoo discussion implied the then-current version, version 10, was something of a nightmare, with all sorts of serious problems, such that some people were even reverting to much earlier versions. The next version may have been better, but at the price I wasn't going to take a chance.

I discovered that other similar programmes did exist, such as PaperMaster, but most seemed very expensive and/or even more poorly reviewed than Paperport. The technology ought to be improving - presumably the biggest software project in the world for the UK National Health Service has some elements of this, though maybe that's a reason it's in trouble. But I think the quest for the paperless office continues.

This url refers to a thread in the Ultra Recall forum which deals with UR's inability to index image-based PDFs:

http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1645&highlight=pdf

Paperport on the other hand is designed to have the ability to scan such documents and index "keywords" so that they can be searched for.

I recall being introduced to PaperPort over ten years ago thru our local user group. This would've been running under the last itineration of Win3.1. At the time PaperPort would provide the interface to the scanner, then invoke OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to convert the scanned image to text, then it would invoke whatever Word Processor was installed on your computer and use the spellcheck from the Word Processor to "clean up" the text.

Although I am not currently familiar with the program (I was introduced to the program back around v.2 or v.3) I suspect that conversion to text thru OCR is still at the heart of the program. Output to pdf offers portability.

Regarding Ultra Recall's inability to index an image pdf, this is understandable since the scanned image (of text) has not been converted to text - there's no content to index.

I suspect that the attraction to PaperPort would be it's use of OCR and any file management/organizational/search-index features it might offer.

Later,
KenA

The beta version of OneNote 2007 offers the ability to search text in images and may be an potential alternative.

I seem to remember that Paperport originally used to save files to its own proprietory format (was it *.max?). I think I had one of these less-than-useful versions (v7?) before they went over to *.pdf. It came with a scanner, and I never used either.

I have been using PaperPort since version 10 (it is now on version 11). I started using it only when scanning became possible to a non-proprietary format (pdf).

I use it simply as a efficient way of digitizing my paper documents so that I can archive those and unclutter my office. I can store the documents to folders that mirror the physical folders that contained the paper versions. It contains OCR options and keyword searching, but I haven't used either. I had no major problems with either version.

Graham Rhind

These days, all of the major scanning packages (OmniPage, FineReader, Acrobat Pro, etc.),have an option to do OCR and embed searchable text in the PDF files they create. There's no need to stick with PaperPort for that one feature. People stick with PaperPort because its organizational features meet their needs, but storing the PDF files in disk directories and using a file search tool like Google Desktop Search or Spotlight is fine too.

Note that the searchable text can be present even if the PDF still looks like a scanned bitmap document. You can tell if there's a textual representation behind the scenes by using the Acrobat speech tools to have the document read to you, or by doing an export to text.