infoTECH Feature

December 13, 2010

A Look at Nuance's PaperPort Professional 12

As we work more with electronic and scanned documents rather than just hard copy, there’s more of a need to organize all those files. One program I use to help me not just scan but keep track of my scanned documents is PaperPort Professional from Nuance (News - Alert). This powerful piece of software can be a handy tool for you and the users at your company to scan, file, view and work with documents if you’re trying to move away from the world of hard copies. I recently looked at the latest version -- PaperPort Professional 12.

Right off the bat, PaperPort offers a clean and user-friendly interface for scanning your documents. The program taps into and supplements your scanner’s own scanning software to offer a range of options. You can select the format of your scanned documents, e.g., PDF or JPG image file. You can determine the quality of the scan, for example, a higher quality but larger file or a lesser quality but smaller file. You can set your document to be automatically straightened or enhanced. And all your settings can be stored in a profile for future use.

As you scan a multi-page document, PaperPort will keep track of each page and give you the option to rotate or reorder the pages. You can then set up the name of your document as well as an author and keywords, which you can use to search for your scanned file within your PaperPort folders. Speaking of folders, PaperPort’s desktop comes with several default folders and subfolders in which you can store your scanned documents. But you can naturally create your own. You could create different folders for different users and/or different types of documents and you can easily move documents from one folder to another to better organize them.

PaperPort’s Desktop interface makes it easy to view your documents. Clicking on a folder or subfolder on the left side of the window displays thumbnails or lists of each individual file on the right side. The interface uses the ribbon tab popularized by Microsoft (News - Alert) Office. Though some people don’t like the ribbon, I find it an easy and smooth way to work. The program also offers a Quick Access toolbar at the top, which you can customize just as you can in Office.

PaperPort 12 excels at handing PDF files, whether you’ve created them from scanned documents or simply need to organize and view existing PDFs. A built-in PDF viewer lets you quickly and easily read PDFs. From the viewer, you can zoom in or zoom out, view multiple pages, jump from one PDF to the next, and even add comments and notes to the document. A FormTyper lets you convert PDF files into interactive electronic documents that people can fill out online. Finally, you can create a searchable PDF file either from a new scan or by resaving an existing PDF in a searchable format. You can then search for any word or term in that file.

Beyond organizing PDFs and scanned documents, PaperPort can display and organize other types of files, such as Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations. The program even displayed thumbnails for my Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator files. From the PowerPoint desktop, you can combine multiple types of files into one single PDF presentation.

PowerPoint Professional 12 offers features of value to businesses. If you use Microsoft SharePoint in your organization, you can scan documents directly from PaperPort to SharePoint so that all your users share and view the same files. You can even check SharePoint documents in and out from the PaperPort desktop.

Overall, PaperPort Professional 12 is a robust and effective tool for both scanning and managing your scanned documents. As organizations try to move away from hard copy and rely more on electronic documents, this software can provide a strong helping hand. To learn more about PaperPoint, check out the product’s page at Nuance’s website.


Lance Whitney is a journalist, IT consultant, and Web Developer with almost 20 years of experience in the IT world. To read more of Lance's articles, please visit his columnist page

Edited by Tammy Wolf
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