How to manage personal documents
As I got older, I found it increasingly difficult to manage the seemingly constant influx of 'important' documents. I found non-digital documents that I have received, took too long to find, and difficult to decide where to file something. So I took a stab at reorganizing my files, digitizing where appropriate and increasing searchability. Here's the method I came up with: 1. Scan all documents with a scanner/printer connected to your PC/Mac/Linux device. 2. Scanned documents go directly into a paperless office such as: Obsidian (Win/Linux), Zim (Win), NoteLedge (Win), Qiqqa (Win), Zoho (Mac/Win/Linux) or DEVONthink (Mac). 3. Have a NAS set up, such as Synology or Asustor, with a WebDAV share. Your paperless office syncs your document database with the NAS via WebDAV automatically. I have several PCs and mobile devices that use my paperless office -- each one configured to sync with my NAS. That way every single document can be found and accessed on any of my devices (via VPN). In addition, I can add a document to my paperless office from any device and it will be sync'd to the NAS and accessible on all other devices. 4. The NAS has a task to back up my encrypted document database to a cloud storage option. Examples are: Google Drive, OneDrive, DropBox, IDrive, Backblaze B2, iCloud. This set up allows me to access all of my documents and search them from all of my devices. And my documents are not at risk of being lost because they are stored on the NAS (with redundant drives) and also backed up to cloud. It's been working great for years.Post was last modified: November 11 2021 13:32:40
