Sort a pile of scanned documents into named PDFs

The problem

Scanners make it easy to scan a whole tray of paper as one PDF. Filing it means turning that one file into the separate documents inside it.

By hand: scroll page by page, note where each document starts, split by page ranges, then open each part to work out what it is and rename it. For a 150-page scan that's a long, error-prone afternoon.

What PDFPUMA does

• If the scan has no text, PDFPUMA recognises it first with OCR (in seven languages), so the rest of the workflow can read it — and the exported PDFs are searchable.
• Document boundaries are proposed from your rule: pages containing words such as "Tax invoice", blank separator sheets, or every N pages.
• Each proposed document gets a suggested name from its first page — document type, number and date — which you can edit.
• Nothing is split until you've reviewed the list. Save the rule and naming settings to sort next month's scan the same way.

Example

How to start

1. Add the combined PDF (OCR runs if needed).
2. Choose how documents are separated and review the proposed documents and names.
3. Export the ZIP — and save the rule for next time.

Tips

• Scan at 300 DPI in black and white or greyscale for the best OCR.
• Put a blank sheet between documents when scanning — the Blank rule then splits perfectly every time.
• Add a prefix such as a client code so files from different clients never mix.

Good to know

• Boundaries and names come from the text of each page; check the proposal before exporting. Blank-page detection works on any scan.
• OCR accuracy depends on scan quality; handwriting isn't recognised reliably.

Frequently asked questions