For many of us scanning documents seems to be an arcane art. It is difficult to master and the results can vary from neat and tidy files to the bloated bandwidth challenging kind.

Here are a few tips to scan your documents to save space and to ensure proper handling.

1) Scan one document at a time, one document per scan with no document blow-up or reduction.

2) Using the Settings (or Preferences) menu of your software, set-up the scanning parameters such as type of documents, resolution (150 dpi, i.e. dot per inch), format (,jpg or .tiff). Formatting can sometimes also be set when saving the document.

3) After doing a preview (or pre-scan) of your document, adjust the scan margins (the dotted lines around the document) to overlap the sides (top and bottom, left and right) of the document by about one centimeter. This will ensure that all of the information will be scanned. This will also prevent unnecessary white space to be scanned.

4) After scanning, save your scan as a JPG file (.jpg) at medium resolution. This will compress the file without noticeable loss of resolution. You can also save your documents as TIFF (.tiff ) files.

Avoid the use of the BMP (.bmp) file format as it creates files of humongous size. For the same reason, do not copy and paste your scanned documents into a Microsoft Word documents as this also creates huge files.

If you do not have a scanner or are having problems with yours, you can go to a copy shop. Most of them will scan your documents and put them on a diskette for a small fee. If you do, give them these instructions so the files are not too big for Internet transmittal.