We’ve just released an update for Home Document Manager which introduces the concept of scanning profiles. This change should make scanning a whole lot easier.

We’ve removed the “Single Page” and “Multi page” scanning options, and replaced them with a single button with a dropdown menu. In here, we have added some pre-configured scanning profiles for the most common scan types.

Most typical documents should be scanned using the “Black & White Document” profile. This will scan the document to a black and white (binary) image at 300dpi. This is usually a high enough resolution to get good results with the OCR, but also offers a very compact file for archiving.

We also scanning to grayscale and color at 300dpi, as well as a hi-res color scan at 600dpi. Most documents do not need such profiles if we’re only interested in archiving the information.

The predefined profiles will not show you any further scanning dialogs, they will simply commence scanning. If you want to tweak the scan or use different settings, use the “Custom” profile, this will launch the familiar scanning settings interface.

We’ve also made a few other minor tweaks, like ensuring that tags and folders are always alphanumerically ordered.

As usual, no action is required on your part, Home Document Manager will update itself when an Internet connection is present.

What is a tag?

A tag can be anything you want it to be. You can create tags corresponding to your project, your workflow, or how you like to organise your tasks. Tags are hierarchical, and completely free form. The important difference between Tags and folder is that tags are not mutually exclusive. A document can be in only 1 folder, but can have any number of tags. The image on the left is just an example of how you could organise your tags.

You can browse your documents with each tag in much the same way as you do with folders. Just click on the tag.

When documents appear in the document list, any tags they have will be displayed underneath their icons (shown left). Using tags is a great way add a little GTD to your paperwork. It certainly saves having papers sitting round with post-it notes stuck on them.

This is very much the beginning of Home Document Manager’s affair with tagging. There are a lot of other tag-oriented features on the roadmap. It’s an important new feature, so your feedback is really valuable.

As usual, no action is required on your part to receive this update. Home Document Manager will update itself whenever an Internet connection is present.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a short video should be the equivalent of an encyclopedea. Perhaps not. But anyway, here is a video of the new import features. You can also now export entire directories by simply right clicking on a folder and selecting ‘export’.

As usual, no action is required, Home Document Manager will update itself when an Internet connection is present.

In order to read Office documents, Home Document Manager requires that you have Office installed on your machine. If you have Office 2003 installed, you will be able to import .doc, .xls and .ppt files, but you won’t be able to preview them within the app (preview wasn’t introduced until Office 2007). If you have Office 2007 installed, you’ll be able to import and preview the full range of Office docs.

Microsoft Word Support

Microsoft Excel Support

Microsoft PowerPoint Support

We’ve also added an option which allows Home Document Manager to use Adobe/Foxit PDF viewers inside the app to preview PDFs. You can enable this in the options.

Enabling 3rd Party PDF Support

3rd Party PDF Viewer

Any issues or suggestions, feel free to drop us a line.

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Image via Wikipedia

ScanSnappers who have made a rapid jump to Snow Leopard may have noticed a few, ahem, problems. It seems that there are numerous issues surrounding ScanSnap Manager and the QuickMenu support. Needless to say, the MacSnappers are all atwitter with this.

I spoke to a senior guy at Fujitsu USA yesterday, and from the sounds of it, they’re taking this very seriously indeed and are working to resolve the issues as quickly as possible, although Fujitsu have publicly stated (and my contact confirmed) that it will be towards the back end of this year before a full fix will be released.

Panic ye not. Fujitsu have released a bulletin detailing what works, and what doesn’t. They’ve also issued patches which will make it easier to work around the problem. There are separate patches for the S1500M and S300M.

So, read the bulletins and install the patches. It would also be worth following @ScanSnapIT on Twitter to keep abreast of developments.

Hat tip to DocumentSnap for staying on top of it.

Actually, it’s not just support for ScanSnaps that’s been added. You can now set a folder to be “watched” by Home Document Manager, any files dropped in to your “Watched” folder will be imported automatically.

As usual, no action is required on your part. Home Document Manager will update itself whenever an Internet connection is present.