Home Forums Discussions Problems Problem with imported files

Well, I have a problem...of course. Our imported files have become suddenly huge. We are over 4gb in the imported folder. I have been spending hours trying to figure out what the problem is. The biggest issue seems to be that the files are being saved as TIFF files rather than jpg's. I have been trying to convert the big files to jpg's but haven't found a utility that is consistent and that I trust. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Dave Stroh

David, there are literally hundreds of programs out there that convert one file to another including tiff files to pdfs. Googling tiff file print drivers will bring up most. LEADTOOLS ePrint is a good one.

But, I have to admit I don't think it is worth trying to convert all those files to PDFs. I would just stay with the tiff files that are there and change to pdf files now. tiff files are great for imaging, etc. but pretty much the standard is pdf. Adobe purchased tiff awhile back, and tiff hasn't been updated since 1992.

I guess it's how you look at it. I wouldn't consider 4GBs a problem; and I wound say it is par for the course. We have over 4GBs of pdfs on our server. It's still in a folder 1cm by 1cm compared to filling up entire chart racks. Purchase a TB hard drive, install it, move your AC folder, change all of the paths and be done with it. Now your ImportedItem folder is taking up 0.4% of your hard drive.

For now, PDF is to document files what I.E.7.0 is to Netscape. It's the industry standard. They make a ton of 3rd party PDF viewers which will do your conversions for you as well. I still prefer the real thing with Adobe Acrobat 8.0 which converts most anything to a PDF.

Hope this helps.

Cheers!

Thanks for the reply, Bert. What is a smaller file...a pdf file or jpg? Dave

It's really hard to compare the two. A jpg, which is short for JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group and, as its name implies, is a format for photographs. It uses compression, actually, lossy compression to compress photographic images for computers. So, you certainly wouldn't save documents in a jpg format. They are fairly small, though, due to the compresssion.

Again, I think it's a no brainer. Save everything as a PDF file. Just add disk space as necessary. RAM and hard drives are dirt cheap nowadays, so there is no reason not to get larger drives.

If you have standard Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Distiller installed on you computer you can simply print your TIFF files to PDF. Just open the TIFF file, go to <File>, <Print>, select <Adobe PDF>.
I have been scanning everything to TIFF because TIFF files are smaller than PDF if you use compression.

I recommend a *free* image application called "IrfanView". It can batch convert your files from one format to another. Very easy to use.

I am in the process of scanning my old charts and saving them as PDFs. The staff has done over 1,000 2 to 3 inch volumes already (as PDF's about 20 MB a chart), so I have 20 GB at least. A big hard drive is less expensive than a single month renting a store room, so not to worry.
To see some info I presented to a group of local docs, see the topic "Scanning & disposition of paper charts" on this website:http://scmsociety.typepad.com/information_technology/emr_conf/index.html

John

I can not seem to get the files that are sent to me in the incoming message box. They are not listed at all. I had a power outage in my office and now the last one I got was at 4:30 this morning. The users desktop does not seethem at all.

So here is a potential big problem I have just discovered. I am importing items through the import page of AC. Under "Import" I open "Control scanner". the "scanner control" box opens and offers me options for how many pages to scan and how to store the file. If I highlight multi-page, the only option for storing the file is TIFF or PDF. I had been storing with TIFF because it was a smaller file. But guess what. It is a smaller file because when the file is saved (remember it is a multi-page file) only the first page is saved. Yikes. Is this a problem with my scanner or the program? someone had commented in an earlier file about importing that they wish AC had given us more direction about importing. Boy, do I agree with that. This has been a big hassle. Dave

Dave:

I'm sorry, I don't have an answer for that problem. It did it to me also when I was trying to control the scanner from within Amazing Charts. I never figured out how to stop it and ultimately started scanning and organizing my files *outside* of Amazing Charts with ScanSnap Organizer (came with my Fujitsu scanner), which setup I have been very happy with. (I am scanning old records as searchable PDFs, which is pretty cool).