Putting all physical files in my workplace into access

[Lazarro]

Hello I have a question,

At my work recently they want to get rid of all of this clutter of paperwork in the filing cabinets and bookcases and put them into electronic form using Access. I'd like to take on this project but I'm not sure where to start. Can you point me in the right direction?


I want to first transfer everything into Access that exists here in the office (so I would scan them all I suppose) → the invoices, quotes, spec sheets, and whatever else we use here.



Next, after those past files are done, I want to be able to from now on put the file I'm working on (say, an acknowledgement of a purchase) into Access automatically and hopefully put it in its appropriate heading [Quote, Sketch, Document, et al.] so I can search and call up any past document I need.

I have some time I can devote to this every day. Would it be too massive of an undertaking → would I need to learn a programming language?

• Basically I want to scan all my physical files into the computer in their own category, add documents I work on into their own category, and be able to call them up later. If you could point me in the right direction to taking on this project -- what I should learn, how many aspects are involved to this, just the templates I should use, or what topics to look into, I would appreciate it. Thanks

[GAtkins]

Citrix Sharefile and/or Salesforce?

[ItsMe]

I would say you are going to need to have at least a basic understanding of VBA and how to normalize data in an RDBMS. Then you will need to interact with your scanner. This can be very complicated. There are add ins you can purchase to help with this. I have been using the same one for a long time and I am not sure what the licensing fees are currently.

Having said that, you will need to start by learning fundamentals in relational databases and how to use Access as an application development tool or object oriented pragramming

[June7]

Commercial OTS digital filing cabinet software available.

Maybe too good to be true but look at http://download.cnet.com/Digital-Fil...-10052170.html

I work for state agency and we use a system from Stellant that probably cost at least $100,000 just for initial install.

[ItsMe]

..... that probably cost at least $100,000 just for initial install.

My fees just went up.

[June7]

That probably included hardware costs.

Don't forget a giant file server for all those imaged documents. I have had some PDF documents (construction plan sets) that were too large (33MB, 233MB) for upload to our Stellant file manager. It might be because of some arbitrary limitation some administrator decided on.

How big is the company?

[Lazarro]

@gAtkins
I'll look at these, thanks.

@ItsMe
Thank you for giving me an idea of what I need to do and making me aware of these master tools like VBA, that's the kind of thing I needed to understand what direction to go in.

@June7
Oh wow, that digital filing cabinet sounds a lot like what I'm trying to do. I'm surprised they make software just for it. If they made a program to do it for you, that would save me a lot of hassle. I would miss out on learning about RDBMS's though which might be useful in the future.
This is a small company, the office only has a handful of people. We wouldn't have a file server. Now you've got me thinking more about it, I forgot that a scanned document could be that large. I guess I'd have to get an external HDD and make backups

I appreciate all of the ideas. I have somewhere to start now. The thread is always open for more suggestions; this is probably a common task people find themselves doing.

[John_G]

Hi Lazarro -

One other this to consider - putting all the scanned documents INTO MS Access could easily exceed the size limit of an MS Access database. As a first step, you could use Access to index and describe the documents in whatever complexity you need, and then include links to the actual document files in the database, to allow users to open them as required.

HTH

John