How to Create and Manage Digital Family Documents

In an emergency, the last thing you want to do is search for paperwork. The same can be said in moments of high stress or grief. Ideally, all the important documents you could ever need would be easy to find and easy to access. How do you do that?

The best way to put important documents at your fingertips is to go paperless by digitizing them and then save those electronic files to a place where you can retrieve them from a computer, tablet, or smartphone. In many cases, you should save physical copies of the papers, too, but that doesn't mean you can't make a digital copy as well. There are so many advantages to doing so. 

First, you end up with a backup copy, which is incredibly helpful if something ever happens to the originals. Second, you can retrieve the documents anytime and any place as long as you have a secure internet connection. Third, when information is digitized, you can search for it using keywords rather than wade through piles of paper. Finally, it's much easier to share an electronic file with a lawyer, financial adviser, or family member who needs it, rather than sending faxes or photocopies.

What are some important family documents you might want to digitize? What's the best way to scan and store them so that they're secure, easy to find, and always available when you need them?

Examples of Documents to Digitize

You don't need to digitize everything. While there might be some potential value in saving every utility bill or every credit card statement, what's the likelihood that you need them and can't access them from your online bank account or utility provider? 

Focus instead on documents that you're likely to have to reference at some point (tax returns, for example) or which you would really benefit from having a backup copy. Some examples are:

• Documents related to major life changes: birth certificates; adoption papers; marriage, divorce, domestic partnership certificates; immigration certificates and forms

• Passports, drivers licenses, and identification cards

• Health reports, including vaccine and immunization records

• Pet records

• Official education transcripts and graduation certificates

• Titles and deeds to property

• Lease and loan agreements

• Tax returns

Family photos may come to mind, too, but they require a totally different process for scanning and saving. With a document, you don't need a high-resolution image, but with photos you do. Plus, with photos, you have to account for color, sepia tone, or grayscale, which usually isn't an issue with standard documents.

If you have historical family documents that are more akin to family photos, perhaps because they're antiques or have sentimental value, then you're probably better off handling them more like photos. For any documents that are extremely delicate or high-value, consider reaching out to an archivist for help, or read some tips from the US National Archives.

How to Digitize Important Documents

Let's look first at how to scan a document and turn it into an electronic file.

You do not need a tabletop scanner to get professional-looking results. All you need is a smartphone with a mobile scanning app, a high-contrast surface (i.e., if your paper is white, the surface should be dark), and decent lighting.

To scan a document:

1. Place the paper on a high-contrast surface. Make sure you have ample lighting. Being near a window during daylight helps tremendously. 

2. Lay the document flat. Most scanning apps correct minor imperfections, such as creases and upturned corners, but if you can get the document to lay flat, that's ideal.

3. Launch the scanning app and position your phone parallel to the document. Most scanning apps have automatic edge detection, so long as you make a reasonable effort to frame the page within the on-screen guides.

4. Most apps scan the page automatically, but in some cases, you may have to tap to complete a scan. The app will then prompt you to repeat the process if you want to add more pages to the same file.

Many great scanning apps are free or offer a free tier of service. ABBYY FineScanner and Microsoft Office Lens are two great examples. In cloud storage and note-taking apps (which you might already have), document scanning is included. That's true for the Dropbox mobile app, for example, and the Evernote mobile app.

If you want the ability to edit the documents you scan, for example, to turn a sheet of paper into a Microsoft Word document, then you need a scanning app that includes OCR and conversion to editable text.

Where to Store Documents Safely

Do you already use a cloud storage service or file-syncing service, such as Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive, for storing and backing up important files? Then it probably makes sense to use the same service to store your family documents. 

There's no shortage of cloud storage solutions. All the options mentioned so far—Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, OneDrive—are perfectly good options. Most importantly, because they're so popular, scanning apps often give you the option to export your digitized documents directly to them; or they offer their own integrated scanning function.

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Whatever service you choose, make sure that it encrypts your data and make sure that you use a unique and long password for the account. A password manager is your best friend in this regard.

How to Organize Digital Family Documents

Depending on the extent of your family's documents, you could create a series of folders and subfolders within your storage service for organizing them. It can be time-consuming, however, and people often start out down one path for sorting and organizing before realizing halfway through that it isn't going to work.

So, a quick and easy way to do it is by year. Start by making 10 folders and naming them for the last 10 years. For example, you'll have folders called 2020, 2019, 2018, and so on. Once you reach 11 years back, add "and older" (or something similar) to the folder name. In other words, your oldest folder would be called "2010 and older."

Now you can sort the digital papers into a folder and know roughly where they are. For identity cards, use the year of issue. For transcripts, use the last year of attendance at the school. If you have too many files in any folder, just make a subfolder according to theme, such as "2020 Tax Documents" or "2019 Medical Records."

What about the names of the files? I find it makes sense to give the file a good name when I first scan it, usually because I'm scanning a document for a reason. If a doctor asks me to submit a copy of my vaccination records, I give that file a clear name before I submit it.

If you're scanning huge batches of documents at a time, focus on getting them into the correct folder by year, and definitely create subfolders to help you make sense of what you have. That way, you don't have to sink too much time in renaming files, but your documents are still in reasonable order for when you need to find something.

Keep Your Purpose in Mind

Always keep in mind the purpose of digitizing your documents. For very important documents, the purpose might be to have a backup copy, in case something happens to the originals. For other kinds of papers, the purpose might be to make the files easily accessible the next time you have to send them to someone else. Keep your purpose in mind to guide you when it comes to naming and sorting the files in particular. As long as you keep that in mind, you can tackle this project easily and end up with great results.