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Support Staff Response

Thank you for contacting Online Support.

There is not a file name limit on the account. To test the account you will need to rename the file and try to upload. If this does not resolve the issue we will need you to provide a screenshot of the error you are receiving.

The term screen shot refers to “grabbing” a still image of the contents of your computer monitor that can be saved as a graphic file and printed, faxed, or emailed.

Screen shots are very helpful in explaining what you are seeing on your computer when working with customer support. It is often easier for you and for the support representative if you take a screen shot of what you are seeing and simply send it in.

Here is a quick step by step on how to do it:

How to Capture a Screen Shot in Windows:

In Windows, taking a screen shot is done by pressing the Print Screen key on your keyboard. On most standard keyboards, it is found to the right of the F12 key in the upper right hand portion of the keyboard. When this key is pressed, Windows takes a snapshot of the current contents of the screen and saves it to the Windows Clipboard.

If you want to take a screen shot of just the active window, make sure to click once on the window you are working with, then hold down the Alt key and press Print Screen. This will send the contents of the active window to the Clipboard.

You will then need to save the image to an image editor. You can use any software that you feel comfortable with. If you don’t have an image editor, you can find Microsoft Paint installed on almost every computer that runs Windows. It is usually available from the Start menu by clicking START, Programs, Accessories, Paint.

Once you’ve opened your image editor, click on the Edit menu and choose Paste. The Screen Shot will be dropped into the image editor for you to save. Click on the File menu, and then choose Save to save it as a file in the graphics format of your choice. The best file type to use for saving screen shots is .jpg (if your software allows it).

Now that you have the file saved, you can attach it to an email to our support forum. Please do not place the image in the body of the email as we will be unable to see the embedded images.

How to Capture a Screen Shot in Mac OS X:

To take a screen shot on your Macintosh computer you may use the Command-Shift-3 function. When you press Command-Shift-3 your Macintosh will capture a screen shot and save it to the desktop of your computer.

Now that you have the file saved, you can attach it to an email to our support forum. Please do not place the image in the body of the email as we will be unable to see the embedded images.

———-

This does not sync with email services, I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. If this information does not provide an answer to your request please clarify exactly what you are trying to do so we may provide the correct information.

Please let us know if we can assist you in any other way.

Sincerely,

Alycia P.
Online Support Team

Why Capture, why not Scanning? – A Historical Perspective

Getting a piece of paper into a computing system is a process. It is a process that consists of several steps. First and foremost is document preparation (the removal of staples for example), next is actually scanning and performing image enhancement (make ugly paper documents look good on the screen, and in the subsequent file), then to indexing the document (filling out a “properties” sheet on the document), then to extraction (turning characters into machine readable text), then to classification (automatically detecting the type of document), then to release (sending the image someplace to be stored, and the metadata about the image (index, extracted content, classification) to another place. Up until the present, the presumption has been that all of those things had to be done at scan time and therefore one product was needed to do all of this. In order to demonstrate to people that there is more to scanning than putting a piece of paper into a scanner and pushing a button, the process of scanning was referred to as the “capture” process. Software that could do all of the above and then some, was called “Capture Management Software”.

The need for Capture Management Software was dictated by several technology related issues:

1. Document Scanners were dumb – they were mechanical devices with camera’s inside. The “thinking” behind the had to be done inside the computer to which the scanner was attached.

2. PC’s were slow and underpowered and you needed a lot of them to do document imaging – the PC was not architected for or natively capable of managing, storing and processing large numbers of file objects that were also bitmaps of paper documents. PC’s came with no facilities to be able to accomplish this feat and therefore needed specialized software to help them do that.

3. Networks were slow and finicky – Bandwidth was limited. Scanning and moving large numbers of big files around the network was simply not do-able on a PC LAN without separating scanning from retrieval traffic.

For this reason, scanning, image clean-up, indexing, classification, had to be done first. The final image, and the metadata that indexes it were “released” the the document management software against which users executed retrievals of the document image. Using a single “capture” platform to perform that sequence of steps was desirable, and given the state of the various technologies, also necessary. All content management architectures (except some hold outs that wanted to do their own “capture” as part of the document/content management architecture) were built with that expectation in mind.

All solutions are sold as a integrated system, where Scanners are connected to Capture Software, the capture process is performed, the images and metadata are handed off to the management platform which handles how the objects are manipulated, and the preservation of those objects is either controlled by the management software itself, or a separate set of software and hardware. What do you do if there is no “management” software? Hold that thought, we’ll come back to that in a minute.

What is Scanning?

The customer expects that any product that says it “scans” also actually performs that operation. When you buy a car, you expect it to start, and you expect it to roll. Well there are crummy cars that don’t start all the time, and don’t roll very well. So it is with scanners. They are not all the same even though they may have the same “specifications”. What sets scanners apart is the purpose they were built for, what they have inside in order to render the best possible picture, their ability to put the image where you want it, and for how reliably they perform those actions. The expectation is that the scanner will provide you with the best possible “picture” by pushing a single button without the need to fiddle with a bunch of pre-sets, sliders and other foolishness. It will simply put the “picture” of that document onto my computer desktop, or in a folder.

It takes a lot of complex and powerful image processing technology to take a high quality picture of a paper document and turn it into a useable document image. Without going into too much detail here, there is a long list of features like:

- Make sure the image comes out straight even though the paper went in crooked

- Take out the black dots you get when you scan 3-hole punched paper

- Make carbonless copies look good and readable

- Give you both a color and a black and white image if you need it

……. you get the picture….

This is what separates a document scanner from an MFP (Multifunction Peripheral), cheap Staples MFP. or other non-document specialized scanner. Many high quality scanners (see below) come with those and other features which is an indication of just how powerful they have become.

Is Capture a Form of ad hoc Document Management?
It is when it comes to SharePoint. SharePoint for all intents and purposes comes “out of the box” with the ability to share, collaborate, distribute and manage files, including document images. So, here is the chicken and egg part of this article. Can I scan first, and “capture” later? Do I need to “capture” at all?

Given the technology built into the high quality scanners (see below) you can simply scan to your desktop or directly into a folder with some, not all of them. With Kodak scanners in particular you can scan directly into SharePoint itself, making it very easy for SharePoint users to collaborate around paper documents. The power of the scanners themselves pretty much gives you everything you need to do that. Just even simply adding paper documents as PDF’s into SharePoint portals, your own SharePoint workspace or anywhere else inside SharePoint becomes an easy thing to do.

The built in taxonomy/folksonomy features of SharePoint allow the person who has scanned a document to tag the scanned images with labels that they make up (folksonomies), or labels that are supplied via formal taxonomies provided by SharePoint administrators. You can use SharePoint search, or tag clouds to facilitate and execute retrievals. You can even just manually add your own metadata (index values) in SharePoint and link it directly to the scanned document.

For casual and ad hoc operations, and indeed workgroup or even small infrequent departmental efforts that may be good enough, and may well be all that is expected.

For departments scanning higher volumes, you can also scan first and capture later, but now you are using the capture software (if it can do so) to bring order to the documents that you have already scanned. With products like Kodak Capture Pro for example, you can organize your SharePoint scanned images by using it to look at the document, creating new metadata either automatically by using the built in OCR features, or manually by adding your own standard index values , or even make searchable PDF that SharePoint’s FAST engine can search for and retrieve. You can even perform batch operations on previously scanned documents that do all of that. Or if you like you can also do that at scan time.

For production scanning applications however, it becomes a whole new ball game. That is fodder for the next article.

Recommended Vendors
In the column below you will find a short list of recommended vendors each of which has some unique products that provide a wide range of document management capabilities.

Kodak All Kodak scanners come with native SharePoint scanning support

Kodak Capture Pro Software to help you process the image and its content before and after you scan

Canon Well made powerful scanners, optimized for document scanning
Kofax Express Software to help you process the image and its content before you scan

For more assistance you might consider joining our executive member community, which gives you access to additional content not publicly distributed and also provides you with the ability to discuss your selection issues with an analyst. The $495 annual subscription fee will come back to as thousands of dollars of savings.

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Article Details
Last Updated
27th of May, 2010

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Insert one PDF into another

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how to insert one pdf into another pdf

1 Open the PDF that serves as the basis of the combined file.
2 Choose Document > Insert Pages > From File (Windows), or Document > Insert Pages (Mac OS).
3 Select the PDF.
4 In the Insert Pages dialog box, specify where to insert the document (before or after the first or last page, or a
designated page). Click OK.
5 To leave the original PDF intact as a separate file, choose Save As, and type a new name for the merged PDF.
You can also add an existing file to a PDF by dragging the file icon directly into position in the Pages panel of the open
PDF.

Microsoft announces two open source projects for Office Outlook

24 May, 2010
By Mark Cox

Microsoft has announced the availability of two new open source projects that complement technical documentation recently released for Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders (.pst). Combined, the documentation and tools advance interoperability with data stored in .pst files, reflecting customer requests for greater access to data stored and shared in digital formats generated by Microsoft Outlook and for enhanced data portability.
Developers can use these resources to more easily build solutions, including competitive products, that run on top of the .pst file format, unlocking data stored in .pst files in simple scenarios, such as extracting photos stored in .pst files to create an album, as well as more complex scenarios, including archive search, e-discovery and corporate compliance, and uploading data to the cloud.

The technical documentation, released in line with the company’s Interoperability Principles, makes it easier for developers to read and write data out of .pst files on any platform, regardless of whether Microsoft Outlook is installed. Developers previously could access the data stored in .pst file format using Messaging Application Programming Interface and the Outlook Object Model — a rich set of connections to data stored by Outlook and Exchange Server, available when Outlook is installed on the desktop.

Now, two new open source projects, a .pst Data Structure View Tool and a .pst File Format Software Development Kit (SDK), further reduce the complexity of reading and extracting data stored in .pst files for use in new applications across a range of platforms. The .pst Data Structure View Tool is a graphical browser of internal data structures for .pst files that enables a developer to better understand .pst file content. The .pst File Format SDK is a cross-platform library that allows developers to read data stored in .pst files and develop applications accessing the data. In the near future, the capability to write data to .pst files will be added to the SDK.

Data portability is increasingly important for customers operating complex, heterogeneous technology environments. Research commissioned with IDC reflects that in 2009, the amount of digital information created and replicated grew by 62 percent.

“The industry as a whole benefits from tools and information that enhance interoperability with our most popular products. The .pst documentation makes it easier for products from other vendors to interoperate with Outlook data,” said William Kennedy, corporate vice president, Office Communications and Forms at Microsoft. “Customers are telling us they need greater interoperability, and we believe that welcoming competition and choice will create more opportunities for customers, partners and developers.”

The .pst file format documentation reflects feedback from a community of reviewers and is now available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff385210.aspx. It follows the publication of thousands of pages of protocols provided since the release of the 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 and the publication of the Outlook Personal Folders File Format (.pst) Structure Specification under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise. Increasing access to information and transparency is central to the Microsoft Interoperability Principles announced in 2008.

When you try to open a fax that is a TIFF file in Microsoft Office Document Imaging, the fax opens in the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer instead
View products that this article applies to.
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SYMPTOMSWhen you try to open a fax that is a TIFF file in Microsoft Office Document Imag…When you try to open a fax that is a TIFF file in Microsoft Office Document Imaging, the fax opens in the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer instead. This issue occurs when a 2007 Microsoft Office suite is installed on the computer.
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CAUSEThis issue occurs because TIFF files are not associated with Microsoft Office Do…This issue occurs because TIFF files are not associated with Microsoft Office Document Imaging.
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RESOLUTIONTo resolve this issue, follow these steps: Right-click the TIFF file that you wa…To resolve this issue, follow these steps:
Right-click the TIFF file that you want to open.
Point to Open With, and then click Choose Program.
In the Programs list, click Microsoft Office Document Imaging.
Click to select the Always use the selected program to open this kind of file check box, and then click OK.
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MORE INFORMATIONIf Microsoft Office Document Imaging does not appear in the Programs list, you m…If Microsoft Office Document Imaging does not appear in the Programs list, you may have to install Microsoft Office Document Imaging.

To install Microsoft Office Document Imaging in Windows Vista, follow these steps:
Click Start, type Programs and Features in the Start Search box, and then click Programs and Features in the Programs list.
Click the 2007 Microsoft Office suite that you are running, and then click Change. For example, click Microsoft Office Premium 2007, and then click Change.
Click Add or Remove Features, and then click Continue.
Expand Office Tools, and then click Microsoft Office Document Imaging.
Click Run all from My Computer, and then click Continue.
Click Close to exit the 2007 Microsoft Office suite setup.
To install Microsoft Office Document Imaging in Microsoft Windows XP, follow these steps:
Click Start, type appwiz.cpl in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
Click the 2007 Microsoft Office suite that you are running, and then click Change. For example, click Microsoft Office Premium 2007, and then click Change.
Click Add or Remove Features, and then click Continue.
Expand Office Tools, and then click Microsoft Office Document Imaging.
Click Run all from My Computer, and then click Continue.
Click Close to exit the 2007 Microsoft Office suite setup.
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——————————————————————————–

APPLIES TO
Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007
Microsoft Office Word 2007
Microsoft Office Excel 2007
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Keywords: kbtshoot kbprb kbexpertisebeginner KB928718

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How to QA documents After Scanning
By Mark Mandel at Mon, 05/17/2010 – 16:42
Public Records Administrator for Executive Office of the Mayor, Washington D.C. Office of Public Records
Building on my last few posts about how to pick a scanner and how to index documents, this blog targets QA methods.

Quality Assurance processes have the objective of ensuring that:

All pages were scanned successfully
Image quality is acceptable
Images are in the correct order and rotation
The degree with which most organizations can perform QA is based on resources and trust in the process. When scanning at low volume, the check to make sure each page was captured and that image quality is acceptable can be done interactively, viewing the pages in the viewer as they are scanned.

However, in most high volume environments this approach is not practical. Stopping the scanner to rescan a document is not very efficient, and watching images fly by at 100 images per minute doesn’t really work.

So what options do you have for performing QA?

100% Image QA From Paper

In the most demanding environments, performing QA on each and every page may be required. Using this technique, an operator views each page and compares it to the scanned image. This is usually done in a batch processing environment where the scanned batches are routed to QA operators after scanning.

Operators view the paper side by side with the image, marking any that fail any QA criteria. Errors can include misfeeds (where more than one page goes through the auto feeder, resulting in one or more pages that do not get captured), pages out of order, low quality image (too light or too dark), page folded over, and so on.

Some projects use this approach during a pilot phase or just for a few weeks at the beginning of a project, then scale back to review a smaller percentage as trust in the process builds up.

The ideal user interface for QA allows the user to mark bad images for rescan, rotate if necessary, move images around if they are not in the correct order, and sometimes run image enhancement software to darken or lighten an image (usually in dedicated forms processing applications, to be used carefully).

Rescanning should allow a user to replace bad images or insert new ones, ideally in the same position within a batch of documents.

These features are not found in every ECM solution. They are definitely included in dedicated forms processing applications and in many high end capture products.

Statistical Sampling

Often users reduce the QA percentage, doing sampling rather than 100% QA. Some products allow you to specify what percent you want to review, so you can adjust this from time to time easily. If the product does not include this, you may have to devise a manual procedure or develop your own workflow application. Outsourcing shops often price higher based on the level of QA required.

I have seen projects start with 100% during the pilot, then gradually decrease the percentage every few months, to 50%, to 20%, and eventually 5% in high volume situations.

Imprinting

A sometimes used technique is to print a date and sequence number at the top or side of each page during scanning (this of course requires a scanner that can do this). After scanning, operators can quickly rifle through the pages to make sure all the pages have printing, and were therefore scanned successfully. This is a technique often used for processing health claim forms where high accuracy is critical to the business process.

Summary

As you can see there are a number of issues to consider when figuring out how to QA your scanning process. Consistently poor image quality may be addressed by cleaning the scanners regularly or by getting them serviced. Consistent misfeeds will lead you to look at the scanners and the prep process. You should have a reporting system that allows you to see these trends so that they can be addressed systematically.

View Picture below for the link you have to click to register the software

See instructions below how to use Adobe Standard as your scanning software

Introduction to Document Management
Document management is a frequently overused set of words defined by many technology vendors to mean everything from making sure that no two people use the same file name, to managing large repositories of millions of documents for the purpose of supporting a series of specific business processes. Its hard to know which one the vendor means without further time consuming analysis. The point of this article is to cut through that noise and provide you with some of the basics that will help make your solution research here on techinfocenter.com more fruitful.

What is a Document?
These days its hard to tell. Emails, mail attachments, paper documents, web pages, forms, film, microfiche, all of it is a document of some kind. The best way to segment them all is to determine whether they are digital, or analog. Digital documents are emails, word processing documents, etc. Analog documents are either paper, or film. Some vendors promoting their document management solution refer to either one or the other, and or refer only to particular types of each. So for example, Microsoft when referring to document management for SharePoint is mostly talking about documents created with Microsoft Office as opposed to any type of document. Other vendors and solutions providers refer to either all digital but no analog, or all analog but no digital. Some even mean using computer software to “manage” content kept in paper file cabinets or film or microfilm kept in storage without actually moving the content into the computer system. All of it has validity, but it can also get confusing quickly.
In order to simplify keep the following in mind:

•Electronic document management – does the vendor refer to ALL kinds of electronic documents regardless of type or application suffix?
•Physical Document Management – is the vendor talking about making physical objects digital, or managing them in place (where they stay on paper of film)?
While you might still have to make these kinds of distinctions in your research, in general terms when we make reference to document management here on Techinfocenter.com and also on Kollabria.com, we are talking about software that installs on your computer system. We further assume that all physical documents are digitized and migrated into your computing environment, and that all kinds of electronic file types can be accommodated.

This paper to digital migration is generally referred to as document capture and you can learn more about that here as well in an upcoming educational brief.

What is Document Management?
So while there is confusion about just which kind of document the software “manages”, the word “management” is equally vague. What kind of management, and for what business purpose are the question you should ask yourself. Since its your business and your requirements, very little except for the basic elements of “management” come out of the box. The rest is typically a one time configuration effort.

Furthermore, you can not assume that that every vendor means the same thing by the word “management”, and that their definition meets all of your needs, or can be extended to meet your needs.

At the most generic level all document management solutions have the ability to let you track “versions” of electronic files in order to avoid confusion about which particular file in your server directory is the newest version, and they also let you “check” documents “in and out” in order to avoid having multiple people work on the same document at the same time and accidentally overwriting each others changes. Others do little more than to provide you with an electronic file cabinet with little to no “librarianship” or intelligence.

Higher levels of document management software features involve the ability to group various documents together in virtual folders, hiding or “redacting” document content contained inside the document itself depending on who is looking at it, as well as a wide variety of security, document grouping, distribution controls, and staging the management of documents according to the business process requirements.

Document Management Solution Requirements
Apart from obvious hardware requirements such as scanners, computers, servers and high quality storage devices, at a minimum all document management solutions require at least three key components:

Scanning Software – the ability to migrate paper documents into the computing environment by creating high quality digital images, extract or create metadata for indexing purposes, and to release the images and the metadata to the management software. This software is commonly referred to as Document Capture;

Management Software – which has the ability to rapidly retrieve, secure, collaborate, distribute, and efficiently organize documents according to the requirements of the business process. In order to perform this task, the management software may require additional technical capabilities such as:

•Workflow software to automate the business process involving the documents and related metadata,
•Records Management software to secure documents for e-discovery and regulatory purposes
•COLD/ERM – (enterprise reports management) the ability to virtually print documents
Preservation – the ability to preserve (not just store) the information in the solution in order to assure its availability, securely archive, and absolutely destroy all content when required in the content management lifecycle;

Recommended Document Management Software Vendors
In the column on the right you will find a short list of recommended vendors each of which has some unique products that provide a wide range of document management capabilities.

For more assistance you might consider subscribing to our premium member service, which gives you access to additional content not publicly distributed and also provides you with the ability to discuss your issues with an analyst