Customer Reviews

NeatScan To Office Software - White

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Length:: 4:04 Mins

The Neat Scan to Office suite provides an excellent way to get receipts, business cards, and other documents into Microsoft Office. Unfortunately it lacks the organizational tools that made NeatCo's flagship product, Neat Receipts, a killer app.

Also note that this is not a Mac product. It will, however, work with VMWare or Parallels running Windows XP or Vista running a Windows version of Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007.

The NeatScan is a nice, portable scanner that is easy to setup and use. I also own a flatbed scanner that is over ten years old so I have something to compare this to.

This is a single-sheet feed scanner with a maximum width of 8.5 inches. I didn't test the maximum length but it is at least 11 inches. Although it is a compact scanner, keep in mind you need enough room for your document to go in the front and out the back.

The scanner was easy to setup and start using. Took about ten minutes to install software, hookup and calibrate it. I did have to calibrate it twice, the first time nothing scanned. Instructions are clear and easy to follow. The installation adds a toolbar to your Microsoft Office products. I don't think you can use it without those products which really narrows the use of this scanner.

The unit is small and compact, will probably fit in most laptop bags. Comes with a nice cover to slip the unit into. Very quiet. You can hear it but it is not annoying.

There are three scan modes:
Image Only which creates an un-editable image or photocopy of the document. This works well as far as a legible copy but was not a 100% copy like my old scanner. It does do color.
Text only converts just the text. But it is not 100%. I did find a few mistakes but only 3 on my test copy of a letter. But the text is editable.
Full document mode is supposed to scan text and images but it converted some images, like letterhead, into text but did not convert actual pictures or non-text type images on the document that I used. It did match colored text very well. And the text is editable.

Photos do not scan well at all. All my tests were too dark and not very sharp. I don't recommend it for scanning photos.

What they do market it as is working well with Microsoft Office products. Examples are scanning receipts, business cards, and documents.

For receipts, the software comes with Excel templates. When you scan a receipt it puts the date, total, tax and vendor into the spreadsheet. But why? By the time you go through this process you could have typed in the information. It doesn't break out the details. For instance, I scanned a Costco receipt. It put the total information into the spreadsheet. But what good is that? You can get this information online from your bank and just copy paste it in without setting up extra equipment. And it didn't always get this little bit of information. It does put an image copy of the receipt into a separate worksheet of the same workbook. So I suppose that is one advantage.

Same with business cards. Is it worth the time and effort to setup the scanner just to get the info off of the card? How long does it take to type in what you need?

I can see the NeatScan will probably be great for those who handle documents out of the office like real estate agents, lawyers, salespeople, etc. They could use something like this such as when they want to get a client's signature on a document right away and scanned into their system while they are out in the field.

Overall it is a good scanner, not too expensive and has its place. But I rated it 3 stars because I think it is limited in what it can be used for.

This review is for NeatScan To Office (White)

This is indeed a Neat Idea; Intended for business people on the go for those quick scans needed to complete your expense report on time.

The unit is sleek, small and well designed for portability, the packing is also very impressive, A lot of care has been taken in the packaging the unit. The software package installed fine on Windows XP home Operating system without any need for rebooting.

PROS:

(+) Small, Sleek, Looks cute and portable
(+) DOES not require additional power (It draws power from USB port)
(+) Scans directly into Micro$soft applications like Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc;
(+) Very fast OCR conversion (Scanning pages into Word files are fast)
(+) upto 600 DPI optical scan in other applications like MS Paint or Adobe Photoshop etc;
(+) Includes a carry bag for true portability

CONS:

(-) Photo Scans are not that great.
(-) Need to have Micro$oft Office Suite to have those Scan Buttons enabled.
(-) If the bills are crumbled the scanner fails to read the information accurately and import them into EXCEL

IMPORTANT Notes:

(**) Install the CD containing the drivers and applications ** FIRST ** before plugging in the scanner into the USB port
(**) Connect the scanner directly to the USB port on your computer, Do not connect to a non-powered USB hub or Keyboard / monitor USB port which cannot provide power to the scanner.

While the unit itself is very well designed, it has some shortfalls, the main problem is Photo Scan Quality, and it is not as good as other scanners within this price range.

But remember, this was mainly designed for portability and does a very good job in OCR conversion into Micro$oft applications.

It is indeed a nice idea and I am impressed by the OCR function of the unit, I am sure the price of this item will come down eventually making this a very good purchase.

Neat Scanner for Microsoft Office

Great little 600 dpi scanner! Although it says it's for Microsoft Office 2003 or later, it actually works with any Windows application that can use a TWAIN scanner. So far I have tested it with Picasa3, Photoshop, Windows Paint, Open Office, Adobe Reader (for pdf files it creates), as well as Microsoft Word and Excel 2003.

When you use it as a TWAIN scanner, a great setup screen comes up and allows you to set the dpi, color selections, just about anything you would want to change or set for a scanner.

This a well designed device: right size (very small), very sleek looking, easy setup, easy to feed magazine clips/cards/letters/bills/anything that's 8 1/2 x 11 or smaller. Total weight is under 1 pound, it's powered by the USB cable so no power brick and it comes with a light weight slip-on cover. You can drop it into your laptop bag for trips or to take back and forth from the office.

Setup is extremely easy as they have thought of every mistake you could make and have taken steps to prevent pilot error. When you open the box, you see a fancy lid with a welcoming message. Under it is the scanner itself in a protective compartment. When you take it out there is a label on the end covering the USB Port that says "STOP: insert CD and install software before connecting USB cable to scanner!" to keep you from a very basic mistake. As you take the scanner out you notice a legend on the supporting cardboard that says "Lift me out to find your accessories and quickstart guide" Under that you find the Quickstart Guide, the USB cable, a carrying case, and a wet cleaner for when you need it. The Quickstart Guide is a folder that also has two calibration sheets and a dry cleaning sheet as well as your software. I don't know who did their product design, but it is done right and I am sure it cuts off a lot of support calls and product returns.

The Quickstart Guide is really that with step by step in big letters with clear pictures. No extensive manual as that is on disk and online. I followed the directions, installing the software first. As I neared the end of the software install it offered to show me a video to show me how to use the software/scanner. Unfortunately, the video wouldn't play . . . not sure if it was a network problem or what. Really didn't need it to get going. When you plug in the scanner you see a series of messages from Windows (I'm using XP) about the new device just as you would expect.

I opened Word and then Excel and there was the new menu bar for the scanner just as promised. Since I don't use Outlook anymore (gone to netmail completely) I couldn't really test it. According to the online documentation, you can scan business cards into Outlook and it creates contacts automatically. The menu bar in Word has Scan, Scan to PDF, Settings and Help. In Excel it adds Open NeatSheet and Open Images. If you select settings you can then specify what you want saved: Image Only, Text Only, or Document which attempts to do both. I set it for document for word and excel. The "Neatsheet" option in Excel lets you select from the excel spreadsheets for expenses in a number of different formats -- you can alter these or develop your own.

I tested the software OCR capability by setting the software for text and used the Neat Company warranty sheet that was in the box and transferring it to Microsoft Word. The sheet has very small print in several different fonts and font sizes and is only 5x7 in size. It was perfect! Every word was there, no misspellings or garbled words that I could find. I then tried it on several other complex documents and some bills just to see what it could handle. The drawings on an instruction sheet didn't come through completely unless I set it for

The Neatsheet Excel spreadsheet allow you to scan bills and receipts and then inserts them automatically into the form and enables you to create an expense report easily. The spreadsheet stores the actual images with the information on the spreadsheet so you can get back to it to print the receipt or bill along with the report. I tried setting up my own excel sheets to track family medical bills for taxes and had a few problems with complex medical bills . . . there is some limit to what software can handle.

The Neat Company makes several products based on this one scanner, so any features that the others have that this one doesn't are software dependent. That means you can probably find software to use this scanner to do almost anything you need as long as 600dpi is enough. By the way, it allows you to set 1,200 dpi in one of the software selections but that must be interpolated and so would lose sharpness. The dpi is application dependent as far as I could tell, so the Microsoft apps will all be at 200 dpi. In testing, I scanned in an 8 1/2 x 11 high color slick brochure into Picasa -- it took 90 seconds at 600 dpi with default color depth. Looked great.

Bottom line: if you need a portable high quality scanner to use with Windows applications, this is a good choice. The Neat Company put a lot of effort into making this a high end product and it shows. Highly recommended.

NOTE: Sorry, not for Mac users.

I was pleasantly surprised that such a small scanner would work so well, a large part which is obviously attributable to the supplied software which converts scanned items to Microsoft or Adobe products. It took me about ½ hour to set it up which requires that you read a simple set of instructions to load the software before you connect it via USB to your computer. It needs to be connected to a USB port on your computer and not to an auxiliary port you may have on your keyboard or monitor to insure sufficient power to the scanner. You can also watch a video contained on the software disk which is of some help understanding how and what the scanner can do. One small thing that I did not notice in the instructions is that to get the required Neat Scan tool box to appear on your MS Outlook 2007 product you must push the "Add-Ins" button on your existing MS tool box. After that, it is about a 20 second process to calibrate the scanner with the paper calibration templates supplied. I then scanned a 1 full page document with an uncommon font into Word which takes about 10 seconds and another 10 seconds for it to complete conversion. It converted without error and was easily modified in word to change fonts, font size and content. From there it is like any other word document which can be emailed or printed, etc.
As with MS Word, the conversion of a Neat scan to Power Point and Adobe Reader were error free in my limited trials.
I scanned a document into one of the supplied Excel templates which is a bit more involved and lengthens the learning curve significantly. I did not get this process to work perfectly, but I am certain that I will once I put a little more time into it. It also has the capability of custom designed templates which I designed a very simple one, and it worked.
The scanner itself is very compact and is exactly wide enough for an 8 ½" page width. A page just 1/8" wider will not fit because it appears that the opening helps maintain a straight page position. The scanner is made with good quality plastic on the outside. I did not disassemble it because it appears that the rubber feet on the bottom of the unit cover the screw heads that hold the top to the bottom and I did not want to pull apart a glued joint. However, even with its outward appearance of quality, I would guess that this unit is not meant for large volumes of scanning that might be necessary in some businesses. But at the Amazon price, I think it is a good investment for a personal scanner that converts to MS and Adobe or for a small business which would treat such scanners as supplies and not long-term capital expenditures. I will update this review should I discover any problems or significant items of note during its future use.

This review relates to product performance with MS Vista 32.

This new NeatScan to Office product contains the same hardware you will find in the NeatReceipts Mobile Scanner and Digital Filing System or the NeatReceipts Mobile Scanner and Digital Filing System for Mac, but instead of the full version of software, it comes with plugins for the Windows version of Microsoft Office.

The box contains the scanner itself, a USB to mini USB cable and a cardboard folder holding calibration paper, cleaning paper, a single use wet cleaning pad, a soft carry pouch and the software CD.

The scanner itself is amazingly small and draws its power from the USB connection, so it doesn't require a power brick and desk clutter is reduced to an absolute minimum. You probably won't find a scanner with a smaller footprint, and you won't think twice about slipping it into your suitcase when going on business trips, so you can get a headstart on filing your expense reports (if you plan on traveling with the NeatScan, consider purchasing the Travel Case).

The software installs in a couple of minutes; it adds a NeatScan toolbar to Microsoft Office applications, from which you can control scanning. Configuration could not be simpler, and after a quick run of the calibration sheet you're ready to go. When scanning to Excel, you can use "Neat Sheets", templates allowing the software to know how to locate and assign information (this is geared towards filling up expense reports, but can be customized easily to perform a variety of tasks). When scanning to Word, OCR is performed automatically and results in an editable text document.

Scanning a letter-size page takes around 10 seconds. OCR processing can take about a minute on a complex page. The scanner is capable of passable color results with photographs, but it's clearly not its strongest point. The two buttons on top (Scan and PDF) trigger a scan (or scan to PDF) into the currently active Microsoft Office application (if available).

If you wish to upgrade to the full version of the NeatReceipts software, or if you're switching to a Macintosh, you can purchase the corresponding software directly from the company's web site (neatco dot com), and use it with this scanner.

This product is amazingly easy to use, and the Neat Company has quite a knack for crafting excellent software. If you need a scanner mainly for document archival and expense reports, it just can't be beat for the price. If you have lots of documents to scan, consider the more expensive NeatDesk scanner which is faster, easier to feed and supports duplex scanning.

First things first; this product requires Microsoft Office software to work; version 2003 or above. The scanner software will not install if you do not have Office.

The packaging and product are top-notch quality. Everything is well-organized, and the "Quick Start Guide" actually has enough useful information to get up to speed with this product, instead of a few pictures with arrows.

The scanner itself is lightweight, and sturdy. It has a "PDF" and a "SCAN" button, and an LED on indicator. It comes with a calibration sheet, and a dry and wet cleaning sheet. The wet cleaning sheet is used if you accidently scan something gummy or gunky.

The install program adds a toolbar to Office applications; each one has specific features depending on the application. For Outlook, if you have a "New Contact" form open, the toolbar will expect that you will be scanning in a business card, which worked generally well. It guessed the company name, person name, title fairly well. The OCR software did not handle "Fancy" fonts very well. An image of the business card is placed in the contact information for easy reference.

For Word, it worked pretty well. If you choose Text only, no layout at all, except maybe some spacing, is retained. Choosing Full Document places each block of text in a separate text box, which can make editing the document somewhat tedious. For a directory listing in a table, it imported the text perfectly into a table format.

For Excel, it is feast or famine. Scanning in normal mode, you get famine--just an image pasted into the spreadsheet. In "Neat Sheet" (spreadsheet template) mode, it is wonderful for scanning in receipts, bills, etc. It will scan the receipt, and it has a built-in list of dozens of layouts for common items, such as car rentals, utilities, airlines, grocery stores, and much more. It also handles unrecognized receipts quite well, usually picking out the total, tax, date, store, and payment type such as MasterCard or cash. I had to smooth out a particularly wrinkled receipt, but other than that it was very slick. It then places a new row in the spreadsheet for each receipt, with columns for Company, expense category, etc.

For all applications, my chief annoyance is that you need to make any option settings before you start the scan; such as Image Only, Text Only, or Full Document, and whether to save as an attachment or imbed in the document.

Also, you need to have a Word/Excel/Powerpoint document, either an existing one or a blank one, open, in order to use the "SCAN" button on the scanner.

On the plus side, the software installed easily, and doesn't use much memory; less than 100 MB when active. It takes from 15 to 30 seconds to scan a page, and another 15 to 30 seconds to process/OCR the page.

The OCR works quite well for standard fonts. I scanned in a page containing 4-up page layouts and the OCR was quite accurate even on the tiny text.

The PDF feature works pretty well. The PDF document appears as the scanned image, but you can select the text (including any text in illustrations) and copy/paste the text. The only drawback is there could be typos from OCR errors in the copied text. You can also do searches on the text. You are given the opportunity for PDFs to scan several pages into one document.

The storage pouch is very nice, but doesn't have much room in it for the USB cable.

UPDATE: 9/21/2009
I am in the process of upgrading my systems to Windows 7. I ran into some problems installing Neat Scan to Office on Windows 7, and contacted Neat customer support. They replied that they "do not at this time plan to support Scan to Office on Windows 7 or Office 2010". That's unfortunate, because this is a great product.

So if you're planning to move ahead with the next release of Windows and/or Office, don't consider this product. I'll update this review again if Neat decides to support the new versions of Windows and Office.

I bought the original NeatScan a few months back, so I was eager to see what they had changed in the new version. I was very happy with the new design and features.

The first change I noticed was a small ledge in front of the input slot. This makes it *much* easier to get a document inserted correctly. And there's a little icon that shows you which end of the slot to align the document at, also very handy. However, it's not very clear from the icon that the document goes in face down!

The driver installation went very smoothly. I ran the setup program, plugged the NeatScan into my computer, and brought up Microsoft Word. I am using Office 2007. I found the NeatScan buttons on the Add-Ins tab, as the documentation indicated. Except in Outlook, which doesn't have the Office 2007 ribbon yet. In Outlook, NeatScan installs its own toolbar.

I was able to scan documents in both image and text format. NeatScan is very fast, and very quiet too. The OCR (optical character recognition, or "graphics to text") conversion is excellent. I found very few "typos" in the conversions I ran. Image scanning produces excellent quality as well.

In Excel, it took a while to figure out how to scan a document in text. I finally read the help system and figured out how to use their "Neat Sheets", which are Excel templates designed to work with the NeatScan software. The templates are oriented towards business users... expense reports and calendar entries.

I was also able to scan a business card into Outlook Contacts, which was very nice.

I'm very happy with the improvements in the NeatScan hardware and the new integration with Office. The scanner itself is very small, and the package includes a cloth carrying bag. It would fit easily into a briefcase.

This would be an idea product for someone who does a lot of business travel, and needs to keep track of contacts and expense receipts. Because of its small size, the NeatScan would also be excellent for an office desktop where space is at a premium. (However, it's also small enough to get buried under a pile of paperwork!)

The only thing I can think of that would make this product better is integration into Quicken/QuickBooks.

NeatScan is an excellent product that has gotten better. This company is on the right track for smart scanning.

I think the best thing about this product is its size and the fact that it is powered by the USB and not an external AC adapter. Works just like advertised. Could be a bit faster. Wish I had received the mac version but if you are running Windows on your mac it will work.

This product's set up was pretty easy. They included useful instructions. It did need to be calibrated a second time before it would work and scan adequately, but that may have been human error.

We used it to scan a paper copy of a word processing document. It did pretty well, a little better than average. It translated the document well into digial format, except for the parts that had been written on (with which you would expect to have less than optimal results) and where it would just insert extra returns.

It's small and portable, which is nice. My husband is thinking about asking his office to order him one for work. We give this a good recommendation, with the caveat that it is somewhat better than the average OCR program.