Department of Engineering

Scanning documents to PDF

Introduction

Some Canon photocopiers in the department, currently

• the Workshops Corridor photocopier

The obvious advantage of this over a normal desktop scanner is the ability to use the document feeder to scan multiple pages easily.

How to use it

The instructions on this page will tell you how to scan your document, so that the resulting PDF format file is sent to the departmental ftp server, and how to retrieve it from there.

Before attempting to scan

Note that using this "per user" upload directory means that only you will be able to access the scanned file; files uploaded in this manner are not made available for anonymous download, but only for authenticated access.

Using the photocopier as a scanner

Although these instructions look lengthy and complicated, in practice only a few button "presses" (around ten) are usually required to complete the process.

A laminated printout of these instructions should be posted on the wall just above the photocopier, to save having to memorise them.

• Place your document in the document feeder on the top of the photocopier
• Use the "equitrac" charging device to enter your username, job number, and photocopying PIN. You won't be charged for scanning, but restrictions in the photocopier mean that it won't allow you to do anything including scanning until you've done this.
• There should be buttons at the top of the touchpad display, marked Copy, Send, Mail Box, Scan. Before you have done anything, "Copy" will be selected
• Touch the Send button. Note that, slightly confusingly, the "Scan" button is not the one you want.
• You should now see a panel appear, including a white box containing the text "Specify the destination". Near the bottom of the screen, you should see buttons including "Favorites", "One-touch", "New Addresses", with the latter having already been selected for you.
• Touch the Favorites button.
• You should now see a set of buttons (in a 3x3 grid, not necessarily all filled). The bottom right button should be marked ftp.
• Touch the ftp button.
• The white box should now contain a file symbol and the text "= ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk". Below this are a number of buttons marked Address Book, Network Add. Book, Details, Erase, Recall.
• Touch the Details button.
• A box should pop up, prompting for Host Name, File Path, User, and Password, with values already filled in. The Host Name should be ftp.eng.cam.ac.uk, the User should be anonymous and the Password should be starred out.
  None of these three entries should need changing. Nor should the Protocol (FTP).
• Only the File Path needs changing. Its current value should be /pub/upload/user/, and you need to add the name of your upload directory (which will have been created as described above, by you running the ftpupload command on gate; the name will be your login name on the CUED teaching system).
• Touch the File Path. You should now see a keyboard appear on the touchpad display, and you should add your user name to the path (so, for example, the end result might look like /pub/upload/user/jpmg. When you've finished "typing" with the keyboard, touch the OK button to return to the previous screen.
• Touch the OK button at the bottom right of the File pop-up window.
• Check that the Scan Settings (top right hand side of the screen) are reasonable. These have been set to default to 600x600dpi 100% Auto, but touching that box will allow you to choose different options.
• Check that Two-sided Original (middle right hand side of the screen) is selected (blue), or touch it to deselect it if you wish.
• Check that the File Format (middle right hand side of the screen) is set to PDF, or touch it to change it if you wish.
• Check that the Divide into Pages button is deselected (grey rather than blue), or touch it to select it if you wish to have a separate pdf file for each side of the document.
• You are now ready to scan your document. This is done by pressing the (real, physical) green button on the right hand side of the photocopier (it does not require touching any more buttons on the touchpad display).

Once you have done all of this, the photocopier will load the document from the document feeder in the same way as if it was doing a photocopy, but it will send the document in electronic form to our ftp server. When it has finished, you will be able to get hold of your document by following the instructions either for retrieving your data from the ftp server, or for SMB (Windows) access to ftp data.

The file will be located in your upload directory, and the photocopier will have given it a filename of the form YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.pdf (eg 20060404152444.pdf).