PART 3:
Wrangle PDFs More Easily with Yep
Yep ($34, www.ironicsoftware.com) describes itself as “iPhoto for PDFs.” And if you have a scanner, Yep can scan all those pesky pieces of paper still floating around your desk. It’s not free, but $34 may be a small sum to pay for total organization.
When you first start Yep, the app automatically scans the Desktop and the Documents folder. (For more targeted scanning, adjust the settings in the Preference pane.) After searching, Yep displays the entire PDF collection—it found 1,600 on our hard drive.
That seemed a bit disconcerting until we realized that Yep’s sidebar contains a long list of tags. And here’s the neat bit—these tags were simply the names of the folders that contained the PDFs. Depending on your folder naming practices, this initial scan may already generate the foundation for your tagging system.
Yep's main interface. (Click to embiggen!)
Yep’s window consists of three panes. The left pane displays the tag cloud, collections or disk locations of files. The center pane displays PDF files either as groups or individually and the right pane provides details for the file(s) selected. Yep shines particularly when it comes to tagging files. You can add tags manually or automatically to any file or a group of files.
Adding tags to PDF files. We dig the dynamic tag cloud in the left panel, don't you? (Click to embiggen!)
The manual process is much easier than in iTunes, since Yep remembers the tags you used earlier and auto-completes the entry. Clicking the Tags box in the right pane also opens a translucent window with more options, including recently used, popular, and suggested tags. These suggestions are based on the file content or their context (folder name and tags of files in the same folder).
The auto-tag method dispenses with the individual approach and applies tags according to the selected files. We found that the process added many tags that didn’t seem relevant. But we suspect that the scattershot result was partly because we had only tagged a small number of the files before venturing into the auto-tag mode. Once tagged, files are found via the search box or by clicking the tag in the tag cloud. Selecting several tags narrows the search.
Recent, suggested, related, and popular tags... handy! (Click to embiggen.)
Yep provides its own version of playlists or albums, called collections, which help organize PDFs into logical groups. You can add files to a collection manually. But you can also save any search as a “smart” collection with live updates. Similar to Skim, a loupe provides a quick glimpse at the content of a file, a lifesaver during the tagging process.
Yep's smart collection showing all of our scanned checks.
Yep's loupe lets you preview the contents of your PDFs.
PART 4:
Other Options for Managing Your PDFs
There are a couple of additional options for you scholarly types. The open-source project iPapers helps manage scholarly articles obtained via PubMed, the huge online database for medical information. Papers is a commercial app that offers a similar set of options but a wider set of search options in addition to PubMed. And if you're interested in managing more files types, there are the commercial apps Yojimbo (also mentioned in our 30 Best Mac Apps You've Never Heard Of feature) and DEVONThink (tips here), but these warrant reviews of their own.
So get started and organize your PDFs. The sooner you start, the sooner that big shoebox in your computer will have some semblance of order and you'll actually find and read that article you saved a month ago.
radarbob
February 17, 2010 at 12:42pm
I've been using YEP for over a year now. Hands down the best use I've made of a computer since I bought my first Macintosh.
THE PROBLEM
The time and drudgery of filing paper documents in a filing cabinet. The time and frustration of trying to find a document in a filing cabinet. The regret of having thrown away some doc a year ago. The angst of dealing w/ that pile of paper I've been avoiding because of the drudgery of filing...THE SOLUTION
YEP + Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner. Note: Fast & efficient scanning is an absolute must. Using a flatbed is too slow and clumsy. The goal is to get rid of paper. Document-centric scanning = Fast = efficient = painless.WHAT I DO
* Scan all my documents into Yep *AS PDF*, *quickly* tag, then shred. I keep certain originals of course: wills, birth certificates, etc.
* OCR some of the scanned docs. May do more of this; but my idea is an electronic filing cabinet, not an electronic reference and research system.BENEFITS
* I do not file anything. Using Yep interface: Between tags, file names, and OCR'ed text I can find what I'm looking for. OS X spotlight and finder searching complements.* All docs are PDF. If you've ever tried to open a decade old doc, you understand the significance of using PDF as the universal file type.
*Faster and funner for finding docs.
*No "keep or discard" decisions to make. Excepting junk mail, just scan it all; who knows when or if you'll want it.
* Easy to maintain. It's so much easier to scan-n-tag; so I do it.
suaili
December 21, 2009 at 8:38pm
And we also provide fast delivery service, guarantee our listing price is lower than other competitors.replicas watches and professional customer service. We are more than ready to show our unique prowess and fortes to gain our footing.
sgallant04
October 08, 2009 at 9:50pm
Yep tears it up for me to. I'm anxious for Yep V2. I have not tried Leap yet as Ironic software seems slow to update.
xiaodanhu
September 11, 2009 at 11:21pm
By seeing this article, I Louis Vuittonunderstand a lot, learned a lot of knowledge
Ah louis vuitton handbagswell
meytav
May 06, 2009 at 6:52am
it works great but i can not get back to my original library.what can i do?
tassiecelt
February 10, 2009 at 6:35am
The business of finding, opening and closing i-tunes libraries make this idea clumsy.
There has to be a better way - this for me is not it.
ssj152
February 09, 2009 at 6:02pm
Not all PDF files are restricted to one topic, as a letter might be. How do you reference the contents of such files - with a spreadsheet you create as you read the file? Not likely.JDWURTZ misses the point - these products allow you to add and edit metadata to PDF files without using names like TAXES_COMPUTER_2004_SOFTWARE_MICROSOFT_OFFICE_UPGRADE.pdf to name a file containing a receipt. What Yep does is to give you an expanded way to search any PDF file multiple ways <strong>without moving the file (uses your own location, optionally organizes by year and month) and uses the original file name. It allows you to ADD metadata like TAXES, COMPUTER, YEAR, SOFTWARE, etc. - what EVER you want to use - and later be able to add / edit / delete the metadata if or when desired. Yep will search the contents of a PDF and suggest keywords, but you are free to use any desired. It remembers all keywords you have ever used and shows the most used in a popup when you begin to add or edit the metadata. It is very simple in operation.Yep complements any other filing system in use or can provide one if desired. I'd like to see someone locate which issue of a digital magazine contained an article on a topic not on the cover - by filename or extension, while utilities like Yep make it easy to add all article topics as metadata (keywords) and find them in a search! The metadata of multiple documents can be edited at one time and Yep learns as it goes. As you can see, I'm sold on the idea and this product specifically.
jdwurtz@aol.com
February 07, 2009 at 3:19pm
If I understand the presumption of Michael Niemann correctly, there's some benefit to organizing my files according to file type, specifically when the file type is PDF.To expand slightly on this presumption, I would also organize all my MS Word files separately.Then I'd organize all my TextEdit files separately.Oh, I almost forgot, then I'd have to organize my TexEdit+ files separately.If I have any Pages files, they'd have to have a separate organizational structure also.Am I missing something here, or does this sound as absurd to you as it does to me?!?!I've been organizing my computer files by _TOPIC_ for over 30 years now, and that basic structure enables me to find files most of the time without any need for Spotlight.Please, please, please tell me what, if any, benefit there might be to organizing my files by file type!!!If I've got a MS Word file about how to calculate the natural frequency of a beam, and a PDF file about a slightly different approach to performing this calculation, your organizational approach would require me to place these two files in separate folders! No thanks!
ssj152
February 06, 2009 at 3:23pm
I bought a small scanner and downloaded a trial of Yep to test it with. Yep is easy to use, both as a program to input data from a scanner and as a method of organizing the data. I immediately purchased Yep and have been very happy with it.I organize all sort of PDF files with it: scans of receipts, tax documents already in PDF format, other documents I'll use at tax time that I've scanned, my entire digital magazine collection, manuals, etc. I print all purchases made on the web as PDF documents and file them with Yep by year, type and description. Yep makes key-wording easy.Highly recommended ($34), and also available at a discount with its big brother program "Leap", which organizes ALL filetypes. The author, Ironic Software (www.ironicsoftware.com) sells a package where you purchase Leap for $59 and get Yep and another program Deep, for only $10 extra. Deep is for organizing images - pictures, etc. and does it by color palette and size or shape.I do not work for Ironic software and have no relationship with them other than using Yep and having tried Leap, which I plan to purchase soon.
