Learn how to setup your HP Photosmart printer to scan your documents directly to Evernote.

One of the coolest features of Evernote is its ability to recognize the characters on images (using the OCR technology). To put this feature to good use you can scan all your paper documents to Evernote and search for keywords in your documents when you need to find them. If you have one of the HP Photosmart series printers that has the scan capability then you are half way there. All you need to do is to configure your printer’s scan destinations to scan to Evernote directly.

Before setting up your HP printer to scan directly to Evernote make sure you have,

• one of HP’s Photosmart printers with Scan capability
• an Evernote account (premium account is preferred)
• a Mac
• wireless network

Setting up your HP printer to scan directly to your Evernote notebook is easy.

Download and install the software for your printer. You might wanted to be careful to follow the instructions to not connect your printer until prompted, otherwise things might not work the way you expect, I’m a victim of it.

Once installed, launch the “HP Scan Destinations” application.

Click on the “+” button at the bottom of the screen to add a new destination.

When prompted to add a new destination choose the “Picture Editing Application” choice and hit the “Next >>” button.

We wanted to setup our printer to scan single and multiple sheets. Let’s start with single sheets.

Type in a name (for example, Evernote – Single Sheet) and choose the “Evernote” application for “Select Application:” box. Choose “JPEG” for document format and click the “Finish” button.

Next, we’ll setup our printer to scan multiple sheets.

Hit the “+” button again to add a new destination.

Enter a name (for example, Evernote – Multiple Sheets, this time) and choose the “Evernote” application. This time choose “PDF” for document format and click on the “Finish” button.

Once done, move the newly added “Evernote” destinations to the top of the list so you don’t have to scroll down to select it when you scan the document.

Dismiss any open dialogs by saving the changes when prompted. That’s it, you are all set to utilize your printer’s scan capability to scan documents directly to Evernote.

The next time when you use your printer to scan your documents choose to scan to your MacBook (or your Mac computer where you have configured HP Scan Destinations) and then choose “Evernote – Single Sheet” or “Evernote – Multiple Sheets” based on what you are scanning and your document will be scanned directly to your Evernote account.

I hope you find these instructions easy setup your printer to scan your documents directly to Evernote. If you have any questions on this please ask in comments.