Comments on: Reader Feedback: Any suggestions for an app that manages PDF files?

By: J. vanKessel

J. vanKessel — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:12:28 +0000

Have you seen the product SoIntuitive Track Document?
It’s a server product but man is it fast.
You can upload PDF’s that are thousands of pages long.
You can see a 50,000 page PDF instantly just using your web browser.
You can jump to any page instantly without downloading the whole pdf.
The server sits in your office and does not need to be hosted but can be hosted if you want to.
It can even store and playback movies.
It also acts as a web server too.
You can produce a web site by just using Microsoft Word and it converts the document you send it to Flash.
And it only costs $30 per user per month.
I just love it.
Check out http://www.SoIntuitive.com

By: Noetic_Nick

Noetic_Nick — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:21:07 +0000

Some people have asked about OCR-ing PDFs and scanned docs. I found OmniPage in my research for a paperless office software solution. The list of software I've found so far is: Yep (and Leap) OmniPage Yojimbo ReceiptWallet (no longer DocumentWallet) Together Papers (I don't use any of these yet. I'm still waiting to see which one has the best combination of: scanner input, easy interface, searchable PDFs, OCR, and leaving files in their current location.)

By: Sharma

Sharma — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:13:48 +0000

If you’ve got pdf’s with references (i.e for research), i’d suggest ‘Sente’ to organize your collection. Else, itunes is great for pdfs that don’t need to be cited or organized in a specific manner. Been using these two for the past two years [close to a 500 pdfs] and its worked like a charm.

By: KC

KC — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:43:46 +0000

Since only one other person mentioned it, I’ll throw my vote behind iTunes. It’s simple, and the interface is already familiar. Of course, you’ll likely experience the 5-minute hesitation of “Wait, I’m only supposed to use iTunes for audiovisual media!”…but that happened to me when iTunes added video, too.Once you get past that brief hurdle, it works like a charm.

By: Damien

Damien — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:53:40 +0000

I use QuickLook Plugins to view all my files if i am not editing them, its as easy as hitting the space bar once the file is selected.

Cheers Damo

By: steverin0

steverin0 — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 18:36:36 +0000

Plenty of responses here, but I am late to the party and wanted to chime in for qPict. It is a general-purpose asset management program that is very flexible and feature-rich. It handles PDFs like a champ, along with all the standard image formats, movies, sounds, fonts and more. Not free, but reasonably priced for what you get.

By: ljun

ljun — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 21:08:50 +0000

For everyone above looking for a way to OCR their PDFs, I think the only way is via Adobe Acrobat or Devon Think Pro Office …..

There’s no other way to OCR them unfortunately

By: ReceiptWallet

ReceiptWallet — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:21:42 +0000

ljun-

DocumentWallet does not have OCR like ReceiptWallet. ReceiptWallet’s OCR is designed to pick up simply things such as merchant name and amount. It is not sophisticated enough to handle full documents.

Sorry.

By: Eleventeen

Eleventeen — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 19:01:25 +0000

@ Drew…

There is a program called Leap from the same guys that do Yep brings their whole document tag/management system to the rest of the files you’d work with on a daily basis.

When I bought Yep it came with a free license for Leap, I’ve not messed with it a bunch but it sounds similar to what you’ve got.

@ Ijun…

I’m not aware that Documentwallet does OCR…at least out of the box.

By: ljun

ljun — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:46:58 +0000

Does anyone know if documentwallet has OCR abilities like receiptwallet?

I used to use Yojimbo, but I don’t like it anymore (for various reasons). Then switched to Shove Box but it’s a little limited (features) but a new interface, now I’m using Together, which I like, but I don’t really care for the interface either. Yep I’ve tried several times but didn’t like

I guess I will take a stab at Papers …

By: Drew

Drew — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:15:46 +0000

There are many programs that do this and I’ve tried most of them. I liked YEP, but wanted something that handled more file types than PDF alone. I settled on Together from Reinvented Software. It was known as KIT (Keep it Together) in Version 1 and renamed to Together in Version 2. It’s become a really polished, highly capable software package, with fantastic support from the developer, Steve Harris.

By: Eleventeen

Eleventeen — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 17:14:55 +0000

One more vote for Yep.

Throw in a Fujitsu ScanSnap and you have yourself a powerful-Jedi digital paper archiving machine.

By: Ivanoats

Ivanoats — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:10:33 +0000

Yep is great — and you do get more than coverflow, with tagging and scanning features.

By: Samuel

Samuel — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:04:01 +0000

If its not too obvious you could tag them with keywords, this is something that embeds itself into the file and will travel with it. Something that Windows did not allow was for tagging of PDF’s so its a welcome feature for me - a convert.

Plus the PDF will be searchable from Spotlight, no extra program necessary.

Samuel, UK

By: George

George — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 03:54:07 +0000

Surprised no mentions of DocumentWallet so far. I’m very happy with. It integrates quite nicely with my SnapScan as well.

By: Piminnowcheez

Piminnowcheez — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 20:45:09 +0000

Okay, here’s something different: I keep all my pdf’s in a dedicated folder, tag them in Spotlight comments, and use Path Finder to search/filter through them and preview. This has worked very well for me, allowing me to search by author, subject, project I’m working on, or whatever tags are relevant. The advantage here of course is that Path Finder is good for so much else as well, so you get some bang for you buck by not buying a single-purpose app. Skim (free), is great for marking up and taking notes on pdf’s, and your notes/markup can be exported for using with whatever other systems you like, e.g. Devonthink.

By: Sam F.

Sam F. — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 11:39:43 +0000

I’ll have to go with YEP as well. I bought it through the MacUpdatePromo and it’s great. I am currently managing about 2000 PDFs with it. Being able to tag them makes searching a blast.

By: Steve J

Steve J — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 11:12:10 +0000

Yes indeedy, Leap and Yep. Simply fantastic software. Replaced DT, Eaglefiler, Yojimbo with just Leap and the Finder.

By: dan

dan — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 03:28:19 +0000

Papers is what you need. Yep is nice for collecting PDFs, but you get the same thing out of coverflow now (I own a license of Yep, so…).

If you have a collection of journal articles, or books, Papers will download the metadata for the PDFs from Google Books (or Scholar, or MedLine), making it easy to keep track of stuff.

By: AR

AR — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 23:54:42 +0000

There are a myriad of options - Yep, Together (my favorite), Yojimbo, Devonthink Pro, Journler…

By: laura

laura — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 23:38:50 +0000

Thanks Bluefrog. I have seen that…as I do own Yep, but the automatic OCR part is where I am fuzzy.
Yep does not do that part.

By: BLUEFROG

BLUEFROG — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 23:02:48 +0000

Laura:

Yep has what you’re looking for!
From the Yep manual (page 9): “The Fujitsu ScanSnap is a nice, very fast document scanner that works well with Yep. Here are the instructions to get Yep working with the ScanSnap”…

This is a great piece of software. I use it EVERYDAY (and no I don’t get a payback for saying this, though maybe if I asked nicely… 8^)

By: Andrei Kharlanov

Andrei Kharlanov — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:37:44 +0000

Yep is the best app for collecting pdfs. Try it.
For me Yep works great, better than DevonThink.

By: macsterdam

macsterdam — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:32:09 +0000

Another Yep & Leap user here. Absolutely brilliant. I have also used Devonthink Pro for year but switched to EagleFiler cause DTP can gobble up quite some ram - it is powerful though, put both Yep and Leap are way ahead of the competition with their innovative interface.

By: laura

laura — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 20:38:01 +0000

I figured lots of you probably do this and I am trying to find a workflow for scanning papers into pdf’s then ocr’ing them so spotlight can find them (when I don’t have time to actually tag them in yep)
I have a scansnap but have not found an intuitive way to ocr. My scanner has been sitting here since OCT with little use.
thanks!

By: BZ

BZ — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 20:32:45 +0000

Yep, it is YEP!

By: BLUEFROG

BLUEFROG — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 20:21:50 +0000

I currently managing almost 3,000 research PDFs in Yep (with many more to add to the collection!) Great software and the developers are very responsive.

Check it out (and buy a copy!) at http://www.yepthat.com

By: Eliah

Eliah — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 19:58:47 +0000

Another vote for BibDesk. It’s also good at making bibliographies, which is critical for academic papers.

By: academicdave

academicdave — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 19:12:26 +0000

Lots of good things to say about YEP, many people I know use it, and love it. But for me DevonThink is the only way to go, its ability to handle not only PDFs but media files, and notes from the web, make it, for me, the best research organizer on the market. Generally speaking it is open all the time on my computer and it serves as the hub for all my research. (I know the interface is not as pretty as other Mac apps, but it has “fuzzy logic.” I just love fuzzy logic.)

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:56:56 +0000

I’m looking for something like this to use at work, trouble is it needs to be cross-platform, and handle .doc, .txt, and .pdf. We generate a staggering amount of paperwork and it would save a ton of time if it could all be filed digitally instead of in hard-copy. Any ideas would be much appreciated.

By: Nick Santilli

Nick Santilli — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:42:39 +0000

Papers is pretty sweet too. Using the demo version now, and have Yep already. Papers is much more polished feeling, but it may have many more features than you find necessary…

http://mekentosj.com/papers/

By: Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 17:45:40 +0000

Yep’s replacement, Leap (by the same company) does a fantastic job of managing PDFs *and* other documents on your computer.

The tagging/keywording functionality it includes is expanded to work with Keynotes, Word documents, Applications, and many other file types. It’s truly fantastic.

By: Ranjeet Sodhi

Ranjeet Sodhi — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 15:42:20 +0000

Yojimbo is pretty awesome at managing and organizing PDF’s, notes, Web clippings etc. Its made by BareBones - the makers of BBEdit and other tools.

http://www.barebones.com/

By: Leonardo Cassarani

Leonardo Cassarani — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 14:18:05 +0000

My vote goes to Yep.

By: laura

laura — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 14:16:22 +0000

Yep !