What is the best Epson scanner software for documents?

In This Article:

• Why use different scan software with your Epson scanner?
• Can the Epson scanning software you choose reduce mouse clicks? Facilitate bulk scanning?
• Does the scanner software give you a searchable file?
• Be aware of where the different Epson scan software offerings save your files!
• Jump to our recommendation »

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Epson Scanner Software Overview

Not all scanning software works equally well with Epson scanners. Software packages vary widely in their effectiveness and their ease-of-use, especially when it comes to document scanning. So what should you look for when trying to pick a Epson scanning solution? Is there a good all-around choice? Absolutely. And it's FileCenter, the low-cost leader in scanning software.

We'll take you through the features you should consider when comparing Epson scanner software options, and we'll show you why FileCenter is our top pic.

Why Use Different Scan Software with Your Epson Scanner?

You've probably already figured out you need better paperless scanning software to use with your Epson scanner. Sure, the Epson comes with its own scan software, but the features it comes with are geared towards general-purpose, light-duty use. If you're wanting to really put your Epson scanner to use, it makes sense for your company to upgrade to a business solution – scan software that will unleash your scanner's potential. This is especially important for document scanning, which, if not implemented well, can burden you with a lot of unnecessary interaction with the scanner: launching jobs, feeding in new pages, trying to merge multiple scans into a single file, replacing poorly-scanned pages, etc. Which leads to the next consideration ...

Can the Epson Scanning Software You Choose Reduce Mouse Clicks? Facilitate Bulk Scanning?

When you install your scanner, you also install drivers and the bundled scanning software. The driver connects to the scanner and the imaging software provides basic scanning. But not necessarily efficient scanning.

Epson scanners themselves have become incredibly fast, many able to pull document pages through faster than you can feed them in. So where's the speed bump now? It's in the scanning software that comes bundled with the scanner. Most scanning software requires too much unnecessary effort to get the scan set up and started. And even after the scan is done, you're typically left with a bunch of scanned files that need to be named and filed away. Or perhaps you did a large document that couldn't be scanned in just one pass. You'll now find yourself trying to figure out how to combine a bunch of files together into a single file.

This is where good commercial scanning software shines. The proper solution will have features to eliminate mouse clicks and automate the scanning process as much as possible. For example, one smart feature many consider indispensible is called scanning profiles. This feature lets you save your most commonly-used scanning preferences – like resolution, page size, and color – as profiles. When it's time to scan, just call up the profile you want to use from a list, and the software sets your scanning preferences for you. This will save you a lot of tedium and unnecessary mouse clicks, especially if there's a lot of diversity in the documents you scan. Good Epson scanning software will also allow you to select a file name and a file location for your scan in advance, allowing you to scan and file away a document in one step. The best scanning software will go further still by providing bulk scanning features, such as automatic document separation and possibly even automatic routing, making it possible to scan, name, and save entire stacks of documents with just a couple of mouse clicks.

Does the Scanner Software Give You a Searchable File?

Scans are pictures. Plain and simple. Even if you scanned a document, and even if you can see words in the scanned document, your computer will see a picture, not text. So what if you plan to be able to search the body of your scanned documents in the future? You will have to make the scans searchable.

Epson scanner software lacks the ability to do this. In fact, turning a scanned document into a searchable document requires two extra steps that other scanner software offerings may or may not do (but probably won't). You first need to convert that scanned document to a PDF file and then you must perform Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to turn the pictures of words into real words that can be searched. Sound technical? It is. And time-consuming. But it doesn't need to be. Good scanner software will take care of all of this for you like a pro, automatically. You should be able to simply scan a document, knowing that what you get back will be a searchable PDF.

Be Aware of Where the Different Epson Scan Software Offerings Save Your Files!

Not all scan software saves its scans as regular Windows files. Many scanning apps save your scans into a database. What's the problem with that? Well, fast forward a few years. You decide to switch to different scan software just to discover, to your horror, that years' worth of scans are locked in a database and there's no easy way to get the scans out. Or worse still, the database became corrupt and all of your scans are lost.

There is only one way you should ever save your scans: as regular Windows files in regular Windows folders. There is no other way to guarantee yourself full access to all of your scans in the future. For example, FileCenter always saves your scans as regular Windows files in regular Windows folders. But it does better still: FileCenter will give you an easy file cabinet interface that makes organizing and finding your scans a snap. A nice additional benefit – you can put the rest of your files, like Word documents, spreadsheets, and digitil photos there too. FileCenter's cabinets also make it possible to move to the cloud for storing your scans, featuring full compatibility with Google Drive, OneDrive, DropBox, and other leading cloud storage services. This gives you access to your scans not just on your local system, but on all of your mobile devices.

Our Recommended Epson Scanner Software

FileCenter document scanning software goes out of its way to make Epson scanning not just easy, but highly efficient, whether you scan one document a day or hundreds. With full support for searchable PDF, many tools for facilitating bulk scanning, a built-in PDF editor, and a clean interface that users rave about, FileCenter can take you all the way from being smothered in paper to a paperless office. Download a free trial today!