Paperless

[AndreaM]

I always feel very nervous installing each Mac update as it always seems to cause havoc with some programs. My recent update to Big Sur was no exception and I've just discovered that my Paperless Invoice software can't be accessed. When I tried to find the desktop icon, I noticed it had changed to a blank page and when I tried to open it I was presented with a box asking how I wanted to formulate a new library.

Please someone tell me I can import all my previous eight years' worth of invoices, and how to go about it!

Thanks.

 

[Nukeban]

I always feel very nervous installing each Mac update as it always seems to cause havoc with some programs.

One theory is to not update, unless we have some specific and compelling reason to do so.

Another theory is to use a program like SuperDuper to create a bootable copy of your current hard drive on to a 2nd drive before updating OSX. If anything goes wrong with the OSX update you can always use SuperDuper again to restore your backup to your main drive, thus erasing the OSX update.

It's a good idea to do such a backup daily in any case, so as to protect your setup from any and all other calamities.

I'm just getting in to that habit now myself. I've always done backups, but I did them on to USB drives, so the backups took a long time, thus I didn't do them very often, thus they were less than fully useful.

Now I keep a backup drive connected to my Mac via Firewire at all times, so it's easy to launch a backup when I'm not using the Mac.

Yes, it's true. There are times of day when I'm not on the Internutz. I know that's wrong, and I feel so ashamed, but I just can't help myself.

 

[AndreaM]

One theory is to not update, unless we have some specific and compelling reason to do so.

It's a good idea to do such a backup daily in any case

I’m guessing there are good reasons to update, as well as good reasons not to? I do backup once a month to a ‘My Passport’ drive but daily seems too much hassle. I left the update to Big Sur for a while to see if others were reporting major problems with applications or software but, having not seen any, I hoped it was safe to go ahead.

 

[Nukeban]

I do backup once a month to a ‘My Passport’ drive but daily seems too much hassle.

I hear ya, that was my situation too, for years. I realized I wouldn't be happy losing a month of work, so I'm upgrading my backup situation.

Backing up daily is pretty easy once you're set up for it. Just leave your backup drive connected to your machine, and use an app like SuperDuper.

SuperDuper!

SuperDuper creates a fully bootable copy of your entire setup on a 2nd drive. If anything explodes on your main drive, the 2nd drive is right there ready to go. All that's needed is to reboot from the 2nd drive.

On my machine (ten year old iMac) it takes about an hour to backup around 500GB over Firewire (old connection method). It takes just seconds to launch SuperDuper and start the backup.

You can set SuperDuper to erase the 2nd drive and do a full backup from scratch (takes about 4 hours here) or do a Smart Update which will only transfer the files that need to be moved to make an exact duplicate of your main drive (takes about 1 hour here).

Yes, there are good reasons to update OSX, and good reasons not to. To me, just one somewhat controversial opinion, new and free isn't a good enough reason to update OSX. A good reason might be if you can't run some software that you want to use on your current system.

Opinions will vary on this, so don't take anything I'm saying as the final word. I'm definitely not a backup expert, or a Mac expert. See Cory for that.

I'm not doing a good job of answering your actual question. Do you have the eight years of invoices on your backup drive?

I'm sorry, I have no knowledge of Paperless Invoice software. Is there a forum for that software, or support?

 

[AndreaM]

Thanks for your reply Nukeban. I've now had a reply from Mariner Software and all they say is to search on my Mac for 'Paperless'. I can find all the scanned documents in alphabetical order in the Library but I've no idea how to import them into Paperless again, and in the individual folders they were in. Any ideas?

 

[Nukeban]

Apologies, I don't really have anything specific to share here.

Continuing a dialog with Mariner seems a good plan. If they have a forum of Paperless users that could be an additional option, though I couldn't find such a forum in a quick search.

This might help if you haven't already explored it.

https://marinersoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/pap-userguide.pdf

Or maybe this:

Knowledgebase / Paperless for Mac OS - Mariner Software

marinersoftware.deskpro.com

If none of that works, keep asking here and maybe we can figure something out.

 

[AndreaM]

Thanks Nukeban for attempting to help here. Unfortunately, Mariner haven't been able to help me with this either. I can find a folder with all last year's 177 scanned images in it but not the detailed info recorded with each image, or the individual folders they were stored in - or the previous 7 years either!

I don't know what to do other than import all these images and re-record all the info for each one! Then move each quarter into new folders again. I feel angry at the amount of work involved when the info is likely stored somewhere on my Mac but I don't know where. All that comes up when I search 'Paperless' is the folder I mentioned above.

 

[Nukeban]

Let's see if I understand what you've said so far. Correct me as needed.

The Paperless files are still on your computer, but are no longer connected to the Paperless software. Is that right?

All I can do is brainstorm, so I'll throw some ideas out and maybe one of them will help.

First, it might help to better understand where this software stores it's files. So you could create a new test file in the software, and find where that file is stored on your computer. Can you do that? If yes, can you explain the file paths here? The point of this approach would be to make you expert enough in the inner workings of this software that you can repair the damage yourself.

Second, as a backup plan maybe Mariner would be willing to sell you an hour of consulting. I'm sure they can fix this if they want to, so maybe the challenge is making them want to.

Third, another backup plan might be to hire a local Mac expert who can sit down with you in front of your computer.

Paying for help might be preferable to spending many hours or days rebuilding everything from scratch. But let's save this unless you conclude you can't or don't wish to fix this yourself.

My guess is that if this happened to you it's probably also happened to some other users of this software. It might be worth it to spend a hour or two searching google and digging down through the pages of results. Someone else may have already had and solved this problem, and they may be on page 24 of the google results.

Another option could be to buy a copy of this software for some Mac expert you find online so that they can do the testing themselves and then share what they've learned with you. This is a very small forum, so maybe try MacRumors?

MacRumors Forums

Apple news and rumor discussion

forums.macrumors.com

 

[AndreaM]

I’ve searched and searched every possible combination of words to try to find someone else who encountered this problem. I’m afraid I don’t know where the files are stored. The only way I can even find the Paperless folder with the 177 scanned images is to do a search for Paperless but the results don’t actually show you where the folder is stored.

It’s difficult for others to try to advise when they’re not familiar with the software themselves, so a little resume:

Drag scanned invoice into the opened app and it will add it to the current library. Add further details down one side and create folders within the library to group them if required. I have only one library with eight folders - one for each year. Then I have four folders within each annual one for each quarter.

The folder of scanned images I mentioned above has 177 items. However, these are only for the last year so where are the other seven years? There also surely must be some files somewhere which show the separate folders within the library? Where would these files likely be stored?

When I used to open Paperless, it would display the library, with the named folders within it down the side. Now when I try to open the application, I get the message in the screenshot shown. I am unable to deselect ‘Empty’ and anyway I don’t a new library, I want the existing one with all its separate folders. If I select ‘Create’, I get an empty library and no folders, just like you were opening the app for the first time.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

The default location for the Paperless Library.paperless file seems to be the Documents folder.

 

[Nukeban]

The default location for the Paperless Library.paperless file seems to be the Documents folder.

I wish I'd said that. Yea, that's the obvious place to look.

If you don't know already, do this...

1) Double click your hard drive icon to open that drive.

2) Open the folder called Users.

3) Within the Users folder, open the folder with the same name as the Mac user account you are using. Look in upper right corner of screen for this name.

4) With that folder, open the Documents folder.

5) Tell us what you see there named Paperless. If there's a folder with that name, what's inside the folder?

I downloaded the trial and will poke around. Guessing this is what Lufbrarunner did, so thanks for the idea.

==================

PROJECT TWO: You're going to want to update OSX again some day, and now would be a good time to learn how to do that with confidence. When you're ready let's talk about that.

 

[Nukeban]

Whoops, can't install Paperless, requires a higher OSX than what I'm using.

 

[AndreaM]

When I navigate to the Documents folder as explained, there is nothing called Paperless so I'm guessing the upgrade to Big Sur has somehow deleted it. I do have Time Machine backups so I'm guessing I could maybe do the same to the backup before the upgrade to see if there's anything there?

I'l let you know what I find.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

I am currently cloning my Catalina drive with paperless installed, I will then upgrade it to Big Sur and see what happens.

 

[AndreaM]

I am currently cloning my Catalina drive with paperless installed, I will then upgrade it to Big Sur and see what happens.

Ooh, I’ll be really interested to know what happens!

 

[Lufbrarunner]

I upgraded the Catalina drive to Big Sur and paperless (v3.0.80) worked as before the library file remained in the documents folder.
Sorry I could not offer any assistance.

 

[Nukeban]

I upgraded the Catalina drive to Big Sur and paperless (v3.0.80) worked as before the library file remained in the documents folder.
Sorry I could not offer any assistance.

Well, you did offer assistance. You seem to have demonstrated that it's not a universal problem with the software, but a particular situation. Don't ask me what though...

 

[AndreaM]

Well, I tried searching for Paperless on the 'My Passport' drive - nothing! Where on earth is the application storing these files?

The 177 entries I did manage to find have the file extension: pldocument but I've no idea where on my Mac they are stored. When you do a general search using the search Q at the top of your Mac, and it brings up specific results, how do find the path to it? This used to be shown above the search results until a few years ago - i.e. - MacBook, Library, Documents (or whatever). Now, there's no way to track where this folder is located.

I did select and drag all the entries into a folder I created on my desktop and then tried to drag them into the Paperless library but that didn't work. Neither did trying to import them as they are greyed out in the list. I'm at my wits end with this software. I suspect I'll just have to resort to scanning in all the previous year's invoices and entering all the info again. I still have the paper invoices for the previous years but that doesn't help when you simply want to search for a specific one without knowing when it was paid.

 

[Nukeban]

When you do a general search using the search Q at the top of your Mac, and it brings up specific results, how do find the path to it?

Open one of the results, and then command click on the title bar. The path to the pile should then pop up over the title bar. I agree mac search could use a lot of improvement.

I'm at my wits end with this software.

Maybe it's time to replace it?

This probably won't work, but what if you wrote the developer and told them their software is being discussed in this thread, and invite them to participate.

Did you start a thread on this over at MacRumors.com? Best I can recall, it's a far larger forum.

 

[AndreaM]

Thanks Nukeban for explaining how to see the file path. I'm not impressed though with where it appears. It came up along the bottom of the file and I couldn't read it over the dark background.

I have had a look at alternative invoice software but nothing meets my limited needs. I don't need to be able to create invoices, just store ones I've received. I also don't want to pay a monthly subscription for the same reason.

I finally accepted I'll need to rescan all the previous year's invoices at the very least . Today I managed to import three invoices but they won't drag into the named folder I created, despite this being the way it is achieved so I've had to contact Mariner again to ask why the items are not able to be moved into different folders.