Product Description

manage documents, exports data, scan to PDF, Smart Sorting, converts to editable text

Product Details

• Color: White
• Brand: The Neat Company
• Model: 00179
• Format: CD
• Dimensions: 4.00" h x 10.00" w x 14.00" l, 2.80 pounds

Features

• Installs a Scan button in all your MS Office applications
• Scans directly to Office applications
• Mobile, easy to carry scanner goes everywhere
• Boost productivity and cut down on re-typing, cutting and pasting

From the Manufacturer
From the Manufacturer NeatScan™ To Office adds scanning to Microsoft® Office including Excel®, Outlook®, Word, andPowerPoint® by installing a scanning toolbar in each application. You can transform receipts into Excel expense reports, business cards into Outlook contacts, text and images into Word documents and PowerPoint presentations. Plus, create searchable PDFs from any Office application with the Scan To PDF feature.

Transform paper into information that works
Patented software identifies and activates information trapped in paper so you can edit, add notes, run reports and more.

Store. Organize. Secure.
Create a digital filing cabinet to organize and secure all your important information.

From paper to productivity.
Export to PDF, Excel®, Quicken®, QuickBooks®, Turbo Tax®, Outlook®, vCard, Plaxo and more.

One software-hardware solution – all types of paper.
The Neat solution helps you manage receipts, business cards, and documents.

It works where you work
At the office, on the road or at home, Neat has a solution for you.

NeatReceipts is powered by NeatWorks 4.0 software suite for scanning receipts, business cards documents and creating tax reports:

Scan to Excel

• Scan receipt data and images directly into spreadsheets
• Automatically reads and captures vendor, date, total, sales tax and payment type
• Customize expense report templates

Scan to Outlook

• Scan business cards directly into contacts
• Automatically capture contact information and image of card
• Scan and attach PDF documents to emails
• Scan documents into calendar entries, notes and tasks

Scan to Word

• Transform printed documents into Word files
• Edit scanned documents

Scan to PowerPoint

• Scan color images and text into presentation slides

Scan to PDF

• Create searchable PDF files from any application

What's in the box
NeatReceipts Scanner, USB cable, calibration paper, dry cleaning paper and alcohol cleaning paper, instruction manual, and installation CD.

Customer Reviews

Works great but lacks tools to organize the data collected
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2EH9C7069449C 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.

Neat Idea!
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.

Limited Use

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 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.