Going paperless is a great way to remove clutter from your life, by turning your paper documents into digital copies.
However, you’ll need great tools to help you with your paperless
transition. Sure, you could save your scanned documents to your
computer's hard drive, but then they aren’t easily searchable,
backed-up, or available across multiple devices.
That's why I use Evernote to
simplify my paperless life. It makes it simple to search and annotate
scanned documents, from any device. In this tutorial, I'll show you how
to use Evernote to organize your scanned PDFs, edit them, and find the
info you need.
Please note that some of the features mentioned in
this tutorial requires Evernote Premium, a service that costs $5 per
month or $45 per year. You can use PDFs in Evernote without going
Premium, but you'll get the most features if you upgrade.
Adding Documents To Evernote
If
you plan on using Evernote for going paperless, you’ll need to scan
your documents into the service. There are two ways of doing this:
either import existing PDFs to Evernote, or use Evernote’s new “Scan To
Evernote” feature with Image Capture on the Mac. I’ll show you how to do
both of these.
Importing PDFs To Evernote
On the Mac
Uploading a document to Evernote.If
you already have PDFs scanned into your Mac, you can easily import them
to Evernote without having to rescan them. To do this, open Evernote and select the Notebook that you’d like to store your PDF in. Then, find the PDF you’d like to import and drag-and-drop it into your Notebook. Your document will now automatically be uploaded to Evernote’s servers. Editing a PDF using Evernote.A
window will now popup that shows a copy of your PDF document. Look
towards the top of this window, right above the copy of your PDF, and
you will see three buttons. The the first button to the left allows you
to annotate your document. When you click on this option, you’ll be able
to add boxes, arrows, text, and highlights to the document. These edits
will be imported with your document.
The second option to the
right will give you a quick look of your document while the third option
will allow you to re-save a copy of your document. This is helpful when
opening the document on another computer that doesn’t have a copy saved
to its hard-drive.
Once you’re done editing your document, you
can name it from the textbox located towards the top of the document’s
window. To save a name change, just hit the Return key on your Mac’s
keyboard.
On the web
Importing documents from Evernote’s
web client is actually very similar to importing using the Mac app. To
do this, log into Evernote on your favorite web browser. Once logged in,
click into the Notebook you’re using to store PDFs. Once in the
Notebook, look towards the top of the window and click on the button
labeled “New Note”. Name this new Note by looking towards the top
of the Note window and clicking into the title menu that should read
“Untitled”. Type in your Note’s new name and press the return key on
your keyboard to save it. Opening your Note in a new window.To
add a PDF to your newly created Note, look at your new Note and open it
in a new window. To do this, click the box and arrow button located
towards the upper right-hand corner of your Note. Adding a PDF to your newly created Note on the webNow, find the PDF you’d like to import on your computer and drag-and-drop into the window containing your Note. Your PDF will now be uploaded to Evernote.
Using Scan To Evernote On The Mac
If
you need to import a document that hasn’t yet been scanned to Evernote,
you can do so using Scan To Evernote and Apple’s Image Capture. This is
because, when installing Evernote on your Mac, a plug-in is added to
Image Capture that, when enabled, will automatically upload scanned
documents to your Evernote account.
To start, make sure your
scanner is connected to your Mac and powered on. Then ready a document
for scanning, and launch Image Capture on your Mac. From the left-hand
side of the Image Capture window, select your scanner from underneath
the “devices” header. If your scanner is connected to your local
network, it will be under the "shared" header.
Now, look towards the right-hand side of the screen at your scanning options. From here, set the “Format” drop-down menu to “PDF” and change the rest of the scan settings as desired. Adding Evernote to Image Capture.Now it's time to tell Image Capture to scan to Evernote. To do this, open a new Finder window and navigate to your Applications folder. Find your Evernote application within this folder and drag-and-drop it into the "Scan to" field within Image Capture.
Now that you’re done tweaking your scan, click the “Scan”
button located towards the lower right-hand corner of the screen. Once
your scan is complete, a new Evernote Note will appear with the PDF of
your scan attached. You can now modify your scan as needed within
Evernote.
Using Evernote To Keep Your Paperless Life Organized
Searching Through PDFs With Evernote
Note:you must be an Evernote Premium user to use these search tools. Searching scanned documents with Evernote. One
of the best parts of using Evernote for going paperless is the fact
that, for Evernote Premium users, it automatically makes your PDFs and
images searchable. For instance, if you have a document with the word
“iPhone” in it and search “iPhone” in the “Search notes” (upper
right-hand corner) box within the Evernote Mac interface, your document
will pop-up with all instances of “iPhone” highlighted.
Additionally,
Evernote allows Premium users to search through individual PDFs. When
viewing a PDF, press Command-F on your keyboard to bring up a search
box. You can now type in your search to have all instances of it
highlighted within the document.
Keep in mind that this
functionality also works for images that have text, so if you have
scanned JPEGs or PNGs, you don’t have to rescan to use the search
functionality.
Keeping Your Documents Organized Using Tags
Now
that you’ve scanned a few documents into Evernote, it’s time to keep
your documents organized for quick and easy searching. One way to do
this is by using tags. To tag a document, click into its respective Note
and look towards the top of said Note. You will see a button labeled
“click to add tags”. Click on this button. Adding tags to a Note. You can now begin typing tags. If you’re tagging a document with multiple different tags, tap the return key on your keyboard after each tag to make it a separate tag. Searching using Tags in Evernote.
Now
that you have tagged your documents, there are a couple of ways to
search for a document using tags. The first way is within the search bar
in Evernote for Mac or PC. Simply type in the name of the tag you’d
like to search for, and from the drop-down menu, click on your tag under the “tag” section of the search box. You can now search for documents within your tag. Viewing a list of created Evernote tags. Additionally, you can click on the “Tags”
button on the left-hand side of the Evernote app on your Mac or PC to
view all tags that you’ve added to Evernote. To view all notes within
one of these tags, click on the tag you’d like to view and look towards
the upper right-hand corner of the screen. You’ll see a button labeled “Show X Notes”. Click on this button to view all Notes tagged with said tag.
Enjoy Your New Paperless Lifestyle!
And
that’s it! You can now recycle your paper document, and enjoy knowing
that your important documents are stored on your computer, backed up on
the cloud, and available on all of your devices with Evernote installed.
Evernote's
a powerful notes app, with tons of powerful features to help you add
info and quickly find it wherever you are. Whether you're just starting
with Evernote, or are already an Evernote pro, be sure to check out our
other tutorials about Evernote to get the most out of it:
Searching using Tags in Evernote.