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Document organizer software?

S

ScottR

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 11, 2007
135
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Well, I'm belatedly finding out that Mariner Software, maker of Paperless, has apparently is dead.
I've seen some recommendations for receipt organizing software, but I mainly used Paperless to organize legal/financial documents. Is Devonthink the way to go for this, or is there something else?
In addition to document organization I'd like something that integrates with my ScanSnap.
 
ScottR said:
Well, I'm belatedly finding out that Mariner Software, maker of Paperless, has apparently is dead.
I've seen some recommendations for receipt organizing software, but I mainly used Paperless to organize legal/financial documents. Is Devonthink the way to go for this, or is there something else?
In addition to document organization I'd like something that integrates with my ScanSnap.
Click to expand...
Maybe Hazel (https://www.noodlesoft.com/), which is what I use for moving files around automatically, and which I love, will meet your needs. I don't use it, but EagleFiler is also a program to consider: https://c-command.com/eaglefiler/
 
Last edited:
When you say organize, what does that mean exactly? Scrivener might be a good tool for this need. Scrivener is usually a writing tool, but you can organize documents. They have a trial version. If you like it, it's a one time purchase (until a new version is released)

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gregmac19 said:
Maybe Hazel (https://www.noodlesoft.com/), which is what I use for moving files around automatically, and which I love, will meet your needs. I don't use it, but EagleFiler is also a program to consider: https://c-command.com/eaglefiler/
Click to expand...
No, Paperless is more like a document database. It holds PDFs and allows you to assign organizational folders and tags within Paperless itself. It integrates with a scanner—most usefully, a Scansnap — so that you can scan the documents right into Paperless.
 
JustAnExpat said:
When you say organize, what does that mean exactly? Scrivener might be a good tool for this need. Scrivener is usually a writing tool, but you can organize documents. They have a trial version. If you like it, it's a one time purchase (until a new version is released)

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Discover the #1 novel & book writing software for writers! Streamline your writing process with powerful tools designed to help organize, edit, & bring your story to life.
www.literatureandlatte.com www.literatureandlatte.com
Click to expand...
I do use Scrivener for writing, and it’s not nearly as useful as Paperless or, from what I see, Devonthink.
 
I use DEVONthink. It really is great. I have hundreds of technical notes, documents from various applications, downloaded documents, and captures of web pages. They all stay indexed and organized so I can always find what I'm looking for. I don't think I could live without it.
 
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KeepIT is another option. Not as powerful as Devonthink but could be a better fit for some situations.
 
I was just playing with a few DMSs yesterday after work, including DEVONthink and paperless-ngx, because I urgently need to sort the documents for my income tax return better (= at all...), because otherwise I'll be shoving things into folders and mailboxes for months every year that I won't be able to remember. I was only half-impressed.

Anyway: DEVONthink looks really great, but is simply oversized (and too expensive) for my needs. As a private person who doesn't earn any money with document management, it's certainly a nice gimmick, but no more. paperless-ngx seems to be the most sensible alternative, especially because it stores the files where you can find them again. I'm using it now on my QNAP NAS until it makes me too angry.

One big problem with paperless-ngx is that the installation is extremely complex and would not work properly on my OpenBSD server, for example. My NAS can run Docker, so it's easier. However, it is extremely important to ensure that the versions interact correctly. With the following configuration, .eml files could also be read in (there were errors with another version of gotenberg):

YAML: 
version: '3.6'

networks:
  paperless-net:
    external: false

services:
  broker:
    container_name: paperless-redis
    image: docker.io/library/redis:7
    networks:
      - paperless-net
    volumes:
      - /share/paperless/redis:/redis
    restart: unless-stopped

  db:
    container_name: paperless-db
    image: docker.io/library/postgres:15
    networks:
      - paperless-net
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - /share/paperless/db:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: paperless
      POSTGRES_USER: paperless
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: CHANGE_THIS!!!!!!!

  webserver:
    container_name: paperless
    image: ghcr.io/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx:latest
    networks:
      - paperless-net
    restart: unless-stopped
    depends_on:
      - db
      - broker
    ports:
      - 8000:8000
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "curl", "-f", "http://localhost:8000"]
      interval: 30s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 5
    volumes:
      - /share/paperless/data:/usr/src/paperless/data
      - /share/paperless/media:/usr/src/paperless/media
      - /share/paperless/Export:/usr/src/paperless/export
      - /share/paperless/Import:/usr/src/paperless/consume
    environment:
      PAPERLESS_REDIS: redis://broker:6379
      PAPERLESS_DBHOST: db
      PAPERLESS_DBPASS: CHANGE_THIS!!!!!!!
      USERMAP_UID: 1000
      USERMAP_GID: 100
      PAPERLESS_OCR_LANGUAGES: deu eng
      PAPERLESS_TIME_ZONE: Europe/Berlin
      PAPERLESS_OCR_LANGUAGE: deu
      PAPERLESS_FILENAME_FORMAT: "{correspondent}/{created} {title}"
      PAPERLESS_TIKA_ENABLED: 1
      PAPERLESS_TIKA_GOTENBERG_ENDPOINT: http://gotenberg:3000
      PAPERLESS_TIKA_ENDPOINT: http://tika:9998

  gotenberg:
    container_name: paperless-gotenberg
    image: docker.io/gotenberg/gotenberg:7.10
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks:
      - paperless-net
    command:
      - "gotenberg"
      - "--chromium-disable-javascript=true"
      - "--chromium-allow-list=file:///tmp/.*"
      - "--libreoffice-start-timeout=30s"
      - "--api-timeout=300s"

  tika:
    container_name: paperless-tika
    image: ghcr.io/paperless-ngx/tika:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks:
      - paperless-net

(Paths and passwords, of course, can be changed as you like.)
 
I have DEVONthink (DT) installed but it is overkill for me.

I use Finder to organise documents, using:
1) Folder structure fro storage;
2) Finder Tags for organisation - keeping to a strict structure and naming;
3) HoudahSpot (HS) for searching.

HoudahSpot using the Spotlight index for searching whether that be by file name, file content, file type, file Tags, etc.

What I miss with HS c/w DT is that DT searches can order results by "relevance". Otherwise Finder, tags and HS meet my needs.
 
DEVONthink does more for me than just organize documents stored on disk. Whenever I'm browsing the web and I want to save a webpage, I click on the DEVONthink browser extension. That captures the page (in various formats) and drops it into my DEVONthink inbox. Those captured pages stay inside the DEVONthink database, I don't make the effort to find a spot to place them on disk, the DEVONthink index and searching is so powerful that I can always easily find those pages.

I can even just capture a bookmark of a webpage I'm viewing. The contents of that link (the words in the url, not the contents of the webpage it references) are included in DEVONthink search results.

More formal documents, PDFs and the documents created by my applications, are kept on disk, in a logical folder structure. DEVONthink indexes them from those locations. I now have a way to search easily across those documents and all the adhoc captures I've made.

I've never found Spotlight's search to be sufficiently thorough. I've thought to try HoudahSpot, but my suspicion is that the limitations I encounter are Spotlight's and HoudahSpot would be subject to them as well. They do offer a trial; I should really try it out. Spotlight has a rich query language (that I keep forgetting) and HoudahSpot makes is so easy to use.

As an aside, I also find DEVONagent fabulous. I couldn't really find things on the web without it. And it integrates with DEVONthink.
 
gilby101 said:
I have DEVONthink (DT) installed but it is overkill for me.

I use Finder to organise documents, using:
1) Folder structure fro storage;
2) Finder Tags for organisation - keeping to a strict structure and naming;
3) HoudahSpot (HS) for searching.
Click to expand...

Can you share the finder tags that you chose?
 
shakopeemn said:
Can you share the finder tags that you chose?
Click to expand...
For general tags relating to content: no spaces, camelCase for multiword tags, and keep short. Whatever suits your interests. I am not very good at keeping these consistent, which reduces their value - often better to just use free text search on content.

Date tag most documents with yyyymm and yyyy. Do this with Hazel.

Use non-alphanumeric first character to indicate type (or purpose) of tag. Like these:
= introduces a tag indicating source/type of object, e.g. =webClip, =download, =devon, =evernote, =book, etc. Also added with Hazel.
@ tag attached to apps to specify "category", e.g. @Photo, @audio. I then have saved searches to show all apps with each category. Needs regular maintenance as some apps do not maintain tags when updated.

All a bit weird, but I find that useful.

Essential apps for automation: Hazel and https://github.com/jdberry/tag/
Searching: HoudahSpot (as well as Finder).
 
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