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Auto-import ScanSnap CardMinder images into Evernote

PostPosted: Sun Nov 24, 2013 9:03 pm
by toomer
We use a ScanSnap on our main Mac at home for keeping all of our documents scanned - but it's also an exceptionally solid business card scanner as well. I can come home with a trade show with hundreds of business cards, and literally have them scanned in just a few minutes.

Any of you who have used the ScanSnap for this know, that it comes with the "CardMinder" software - which attempts to OCR the card, figure out where the various fields are, etc. I've never had much need for trying to create "structured" data out of business cards - because even the ScanSnap doesn't do all that great of a job, and there would be a lot of manual cleanup required afterward. No, for me - just OCR on the cards is more than enough, because I can usually remember "his first name was Jack" or "he worked at company XYZ" and I can simply search on that.

So, to accomplish this, I built a nice little Hazel rule this evening which will take the card images as soon as they're created by CardMinder ... and immediately put them in an Evernote folder for me. The secret is, there is a CardMinder "database" file used when you use the software ... but it's not really a database, it's actually just a normal structure of files. The business card images are stored with a filename structure of <UNIQUE IDENTIFIER>_N1.PDF for the front of the card, and <UNIQUE IDENTIFIER>_N2.PDF for the back of the card. I simply have Hazel watch that directory ... and for any new _N1 files that appear, simply trigger AppleScript to immediately push it into evernote.

It works like a champ! I will have far more use of my business card images on Evernote on my Mac, PC, iOS devices, etc. than in the CardMinder app back home ... and it's fully automatic, nothing extra to be done on my part.

Re: Auto-import ScanSnap CardMinder images into Evernote

PostPosted: Fri Feb 28, 2014 3:12 am
by shooin
Awsome idea. I just got a scan snap and i managed to get this working although I think it could be better. Is there a way that you got front and back as the same note? if so can you share your applescript? It would be cool if it could somehow be titled the name of the person but that must be impossible. any way thanks for the idea.. if you have a second I would love to combine the two but not a scripter.

Regards,
Shoo