Hi guys, I had a thought as to whether or not this was possible, and it seems that it is on older versions of Adobe Reader, but the new one requires a subscription. That's not so much an issue, but I was merely curious if you had ever one it before and what the results were like. Basically, I work in an airplane spares warehouse and we have certificates for all of the components that come in, which requires a tremendous amount of scanning. Unfortunately, the only way to do it is one by one, and it is painstakingly slow as they all need to be renamed as well, otherwise we'd never find them again. We currently have well over 5000 certificates, probably about 15000 pages in total, that need scanning in. The manager told me to stop scanning them in as it isn't producing money, yet you can't sell the goods without the certification; but that's a story for another day... /rage mode. So, my question to you lovely folk is this... Is there any software, free or not, that I can basically scan in hundreds of pages at once, split them up when I want to as they are in various lengths (anything from 1 page to 30+ pages each), and then create their own separate PDF for that file? I know it isn't a common one, and it is probably quite a weird question. However, I thought I'd ask in case someone has encountered something like this before. I'd love to be able to get this all done as I am being asked to find certifications which stops me from doing any real work, and then I get questioned why my numbers were lower than usual... I just can't effin' win! Thanks in advanced guys.
Rather than OCR, what you need is some kind of document management system - you wouldn't need to rename files, because the DMS would store and track all the PDFs for you. They should have some element of OCR so you should be able to organise automatically by, for example, serial numbers on the certificates. TL;DR version: if the certificates really are that vitally important to your business, you shouldn't be doing things manually. Take a look at some white papers: https://www.laserfiche.com/resource/document-management-software-buyers-guide]here and this one for example.
Unfortunately, there are a number of different certification methods that are used in the industry, and none of them have serial numbers. I cannot show you the documents for legal reasons, but I don't think some kind of automated method will work. The renaming is crucial as well as they need to be easily searchable by the entire crew, and they're not ... let's say, bright? I was thinking if it would be possible to scan in 50 pages at once (or more) and then split them down. What if I convert the file(s) to .docx files, copy and paste them to separate pages, and then re-PDF them? Perhaps that is something to consider? The manger is paying me for my time, so long as it is cost effective to the company, so I want to make it as efficient as possible.
Get yourself an Abode Acrobat licence (or whatever its called these days...). Scan lots at once, then open the scan and use the tools in acrobat to split out the pages you want need to a new document and save. Simples! Used it lots at work with papercopy test records. Dumped it all on the scanner, and then split and saved later, rather than having to pop back and forth between the scanner and my PC. Free 30 day trial: here
I haven't actually used it for for a while, but I've used Nuance PaperPort for dealing with converting scanned documents into searchable PDF libraries. It came free with my scanner and worked fairly well. Basically it allowed you to scan documents to PDF using a fairly solid OCR engine to make the text searchable and also allowed to to manage (split, merge, stack etc) the documents). If the documents are suitable for OCR then I think that is the way to go. Making the content searchable is key. Once you can do that finding and sorting is fairly easy. That said, as mentioned above, if the documents really are that vital and valuable, you should probably be following some sort of proven good practice (dare I say it, rather than asking on a non-specific forum ).
If you want to split a large pdf you can use cute pdf . Install it. Open the pdf. Print it selecting cute pdf as the printer and the pages you need. You now have a pdf with the required pages. It's also free
My work use Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader) for a very similar purpose - splitting up PDFs (scanned or otherwise) into smaller separate PDFs. We also use it for the opposite purpose - combining a number of PDFs into one large PDF, or for replacing individual pages in a PDF with single scanned pages.
Something that is cheaper than Full acrobat and offers similar functionality is Nitro PDF. We have a corporate license so only costs £65 a copy, but you can get one for about £85. https://www.gonitro.com/
