The paper war has started

Following on from my previous post of the paperless home, I just had to update you on my status. And, it's going to get ugly...

I now have my scanners, document capturing software, digital filing cabinets, backup solution, and strategy all in place and I've put myself through initial bootcamp of scanning in some initial documents. And now, I'm getting that destructive feeling where all paper must be round up, scanned, then destroyed. Woohoo.

However, just before breaking out the shredder, my wife reminded me that I need to keep some of this stuff. And how long for? 6-7 years worth of bank statements for starters. What? OK, I did say that some documents do need to be kept for a while and if it's just bank statements then I can live with that. They can be boxed up and stored out of sight for a while. For all other collectables like utility bills I will keep the last bill for those cases where they are sent to me and scan and destroy all others.

So, now that I have my strategy and rules of play, let the battle commence.

One new piece of important information I discovered in this process is that there are 2 flavours of PDF files. Yes, 2, not just the one I always thought there was. The second flavour I found was something called PDF/A. From what I can tell the A stands for Archive and sets the definition as being a PDF file that is suitable for long term storage and should be capable of being read by future software. It turns out that it is possible to have the PDF file to refer to some formatting data outside of the file itself. An example would be font and colour information. In a PDF/A formatted document all of the data is stored inside the file meaning it can be used stand-alone without the need for any information used outside of that file today. So should I open the file in say 20 years time I should be able to open it with the equivalent PDF reader of the time. The file won't be relying on the computer or operating system I use today for any of it's data.

How important this is for scanning in documents (rather than creading a PDF from a word processing app) I don't know, but where I can I will be selecting PDF/A as the format of choice.