Scannable, the app

There are many times that we need to scan things – in order to save a document, send one, or to help us organize the tons of papers that we really don’t need.

Aunty does have a small portable scanner by ScanSnap that works great, but is limited to paper no wider than the standard 8 1/2″, and the thinness of paper.

Amy Lynn Andrews is one of Aunty’s gurus (though she doesn’t know it) for website creating, building, and tips.  She is a really nice person, and has even responded to a couple of Aunty’s emails, never pushing to sell.  She wants to help people, and she does.

Her useletter today in Aunty’s inbox mentioned a mobile app for scanning.  Scannable by Evernote.  This one is made for the iPhone and iPad, is simple (and free!) to install via the App Store, and is what Aunty will use for the majority of her scan then trash chores.  Mari Kondo of the Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up (I know, I know, I am still working on the review of that great book) says that we don’t need to keep most of our papers, and it is SO true.  It is clutter stuck in file cabinets that we never look at.

Anywho, just wanted to share this latest find with you.

And, if anyone remembers, the re-designing of Aunty’s website is still in progress.  One of these days, hopefully soon, those web design people will be done, and the “new” Aunty will be revealed.

Update:  This seemed like something so easy, but for non-techy aunties, it first seemed like being shot out of a cannon into strange and fast scenery.

When you open the Scannable app on your phone, it instantly takes you into a camera mode, trying to find a document to capture.  For awhile, it couldn’t figure out what to do with my leg, since that is what it was focusing on.  (btw, it is so unfair that Aunty’s leg is now all wrinkled and spotted with age.  And it was NOT something that needed to be scanned and saved.)

On the screen, click on the 3 dots (dot, dot, dot) which will take you to a page with options.  Light and Capture are on AUTO modes, which Aunty left alone.  Go to the Settings circle.  You can choose your File Type (Aunty chose PDF, though the default is Auto with image and PDF).

The next section shows “Evernote” and “Business Cards”.  Aunty clicked on “Evernote” and signed up for an account (not necessary but Aunty did anyway).  To do this, enter your email address and a password.  Enter carefully because it seems to just accept whatever you keyboard in before you can make note of what you entered.  Almost too quickly.  Before Aunty finished putting in her password it swooshed it into acceptance.  However, it is easy enough to retrieve and change when you try to log in by letting it know you “forgot your password” because it sends the reset to your email address.

Aunty didn’t do anything with the “Business Cards” topic.

“Introduction” takes you through a 4 page screen of how it works, but doesn’t really help.

Hitting “Done” will take you back to the camera mode screen, and Aunty’s wrinkled spotted leg.  Resting the phone on the old leg prevented the app from taking pictures and the app closes soon after.  The funny looking “S” next to the dot, dot, dot will take you to a screen trying to connect with a WIFI scanner, if you have one.  Aunty ignored that.

Truth to tell, Aunty almost gave up.  This app is like a teenager on a skateboard.  Fast, impatient, does it’s own thing.  HOWEVER, it is free, and came highly recommended by Amy Lynn Andrews, so Aunty decided to “shoot” an old 2 page mortgage statement with it.

Tapping on the app, Aunty held the phone above the 1st page of the statement.  The blue box of light captured the page and snapped it.  Then the phone was held above the 2nd page.  The blue box of light snapped that one too!  It works fast and auto focuses and crops by itself.  It then tries to keep finding more documents to snap, but you can stop it by touching on the images of the pages you just took on the bottom of the scanning screen.  Hurray!

You now have options to “Send” or “Save”, so Aunty chose “Send” and then chose “Mail” vs “Share” to Aunty’s email address.  Because Aunty had signed up for an Evernote account, this scan was also saved automatically and also moved to “Recents” automatically.

Whatever.  (Whatever is what Aunty says when she doesn’t really understand something but it is not harmful or bad, so it is acceptable.)

Once the pdf file arrived in Aunty’s email box with subject heading “Scannable Document – sent from Scannable”, Aunty clicked on the file, and it opens in whatever it opens in on your computer (in Aunty’s case it is Adobe Reader).  To organize and save it, Aunty pulls down the “File” tab and chooses “Save a copy”, renames it, and finds the folder to put it in – in this case, it was the “2017” folder of the mortgage folder on the desktop.

Phew!  It was kinda tough getting to that point, but also quite wonderful.  Aunty did the recent Hawaii Gas bill, and it got easier.  Snap, tap, send, file.  Actually, it was really easy!  And super fast.

Scannable keeps wanting to take pictures of Aunty’s wrinkled body parts, and now, that is fine, because the delete option is there, and a fun way to get rid of what does not need to be recorded.

Whatever!