C:\Users\< username>\AppData\Roaming\Benubird\Benubird.db (Windows Vista | Windows 7)
C:\Documents and Settings\< username>\Application Data\Benubird\Benubird.db (Windows XP)

Now if you are using the repository and wish to back this up then the default location for this is as follows:

C:\Users\< username>\AppData\Roaming\Benubird\Repository (Windows Vista | Windows 7)
C:\Documents and Settings\< username>\Application Data\Benubird\Repository (Windows XP)

However – note that it is possible for you to change this within Benubird, so be sure to make sure you are backing up the correct location!

• File away scans or pdfs in an organized directory structure.
• Tag each scan or pdf with searchable metadata and comments.
• Archive everything off to a server or storage media easily.
• Runs on Mac OSX
• Intuitive, simple user interface
• Basic set of features (no bloatware)
• Reasonable cost ($200 or less), or free
• Good documentation/tutorials
• Good customer support

This is essentially what we are trying to provide for Windows computer users. A quality document manager for the average computer user who just wants an easy solution for managing their electronic documents. A solution that provides all of the necessary features, without moving into bloatware territory, and most importantly, keeps it simple — so there’s no learning curve required.

Managing your documents shouldn’t be hard, it should be really, really simple.

Download a free 14 day trial of Benubird Pro today.

It’s hard to imagine that even just a few years ago, technologies like YouTube, Gmail, Facebook, Skype, and many more, either hadn’t yet been created or were only just appearing on the scene. But today, we use them as if we couldn’t live without them, and indeed, we forget what it was like without them.

From my perspective, while Gmail has been a huge help with painlessly managing my email, it’s Skype that really stands out. Free calls to friends and business colleagues, extremely cheap calls to landline phones (local or international), video calls, conferencing calls, text messages to cell phones, etc, it’s brilliant. And because of Skype, I now no longer require a landline phone as the combination of a cell phone –it provides everything I need, for almost nothing.

It’s been huge help here at Debenu too — what’s not to love about free conference calls for meetings? What’s more, the quality of the sound is fantastic, even with 5 or 6 people on a conference call.

If you haven’t tried Skype, I highly recommend it.

That means you need to set a few rules and stick to them — when a new file comes in, you need to add it to the document repository, when you need to edit a file, you need to edit it from within the document management system, and so on.

This protects the fidelity of your documents and ensures that you will always be able to find the most up-to-date version of a document, with just a couple of clicks — one week or five years from now.

With this in mind, we included a feature in Benubird Pro that lets you automatically and silently import files from specified folders. You can setup as many watched folders as you require and they will constantly work away in the background, adding files that are placed in the specified folders.

Sounds good — but it gets better. There is also a number of options that you can configure for each watched folder, which are there to help you automate things as much as possible:

• Continuously import files automatically and silently in the background
• Choose which file types to add when importing files
• Specify metadata that should be added to imported files
• Automatically add imported files to a Collection

As you can see, using watched folders has the potential to save you a lot of time and makes organizing your documents even easier.

Read more about importing files using watched folders in Benubird Pro or download a free 14 day trial.

This makes backing up or just sharing a few files with a colleague, quick and easy.

To read more about the export feature in Benubird Pro, click on the link below.

Export files to zip archive, folder or email

P.S. you can also apply password security to the Zip archives that you create. Cool!

Adding tags to files

To add a tag to a file simply right-click on that file and select Info from the context-menu. Look for the Tags field and click on the Edit button next to it. The Tags Selection dialog (shown below) will then pop-up.

Choose the tags you want to add to the selected file by double-clicking on them or using the arrows to move the tags, then click OK to have the selected tags assigned to your file.

Turning on the Tags Filter

Once you have added some tags to files you can begin using the Tags Filter. To show the tags filter select the checkbox next to Tags in the Show/Hide group on the Home ribbon.

Filtering using tags

On the right hand-side of Benubird Pro you should now see the Tags Filter, which lists only the tags that have been assigned to files.

You can immediately begin filtering the list of available tags by selecting one or more tags in the Tags Filter (multiple tags can be selected by holding down Ctrl and left-clicking). The file list will then be filtered based on the tags you have selected — only files that are associated with the selected tags will be shown.

The tags can be displayed in an Alphabetical or Popular order and you can switch the order by clicking on the column header.

Match all or Match any

At the bottom of the Tags Filter you should see two options — Match all of these tags and Match any of these tags. These options give you extra flexibility in deciding which files are displayed. If you select Match all of these tags then only files that contain all of the tags that the user has selected are shown in the file list, but if you select Match any of these tags then any files that contain at least one of the tags selected in the Tags Filter are shown in the file list.

As you can see, by using the Tags Filter you can easily shorten the list of available files, and thus quickly pinpoint the file you’re looking for.

A tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file).

Tags have really taken off on the Web over the past few years, but they are still an underutilized tool on the desktop — which is odd — since they are such an effective and simple way of locating documents with just a couple of clicks. We’re trying to change this anomaly with Benubird and its powerful tagging features.

Getting Started

Tip: Open the Manage Tags window by clicking on Library Tags on the Home tab.

To help you get started we’ve added some example tags to Benubird so that you can begin tagging your files as quickly as possible. These example tags can be assigned to files, edited or deleted just like any other tag.

Add New Tags

To create new tags click on the Add button in the Manage Tags window, enter in the name of your tag (if you’re adding multiple tags then click on the Add Multiple button), and click OK. The new tag(s) should now be shown in the tags list.

Edit Tags

To edit a tag select it in the tags list and click on the Edit button or double-click on the tag. Editing a tag in the Manage Tags window will mean that all references to that tag in Benubird will also be updated.

Delete Tags

To delete a tag select it in the tags list and click on the Delete button. Deleting a tag in the Manage Tags window removes it from all files in Benubird.

Import and Export Tags

We want to make using Benubird an easy and ‘headache-free’ experience, that’s why we have included a handy feature that allows you to Import and Export a list of tags from and to a CSV file.

Importing tags is just a matter of creating a CSV file, adding each of your tags to a new line, clicking on the Import button, selecting the file and clicking OK.

Exporting tags is even easier, just click on Export, give your CSV file a name and click OK.

That’s it, pretty simple eh? In our next post we’ll show you how to assign the tags you’ve just created to files.

For the past few years we’ve been using a service called jConnect Premier to send and receive faxes via email. It’s pretty simple – you just have to type in a From and To address (provided to you by J2) and attach the PDF or Tiff document that you want to fax, then click send. Within 15 minutes you’ll receive an email message confirming if your fax has been successfully sent or not.

Sending and receiving faxes doesn’t get any easier than this.

Then today, to my great surprise, I logged into my online bank account, and discovered that I was able to register to receive all of my bank statements via email. But there’s more, I could also download statements – from as far back as 7 years ago – as PDFs to my Desktop.

This is hugely helpful to me as I am a frequent traveler, and have been, up to this point, scanning all of my paper bank statements to PDF, so that I could take them with me on my laptop. As you can imagine, it’s a time consuming process.

The good news doesn’t stop there though:

• The bank statements that I receive through the mail are classified as legal documents as they are exact replicas of paper statements.
• It costs me nothing – I can access my current and historical statements 24 hours a day 7 days a week, for free.
• It takes under 2 minutes to register.

If your bank doesn’t already let you to receive bank statements via email, you should be asking them why not, because it’ll make your life a whole lot easier.