Paperless-ngx Questions reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ccigas · 2023-12-23 03:31 Im looking to start up paperless but I am a little hesitant. I am used to having a folder structure of all the files and still use it today, it seems like you lose that correct? It seems like its just meant to access or search for files that you will never have to edit again but I cant tell. Do you use paperless with docs that youll access? How do you manage them, just download, edit, re-upload? Is there duplicates? Id appreciate any insight on the workflow, not sure if I want to have to access a webpage each time I want to look for a doc. Also if you can share your volumes that would be great too. I am stuck on how the volumes will map, it seems like you just use the upload function on the web or map a share to the consume folder but does the docs then get stored in the data volume? Thanks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- falcorns_balls · 2023-12-23 04:06 Paperless utilizes a tagging system. so each document can have several tags attached to it. you can configure some automatic tagging as well. But instead of looking through folders you have a robust way to filtering by including and omitting tags. I find it much easier than using folders myself, but to each his own. the volumes mount to the /var/lib/docker/volumes/\[volume name\]/\_data folder by default. I just used the volumes for paperless myself. my postgres volume is also mounted as a docker volume. volumes: \- documents\_data:/usr/src/paperless/data \- documents\_media:/usr/src/paperless/media you could bind mount to a specific folder with: \- /home/bob/documents/data:/user/src/paperless/data if you wanted, but you would have to make sure your permissions are correct or it would cause issues. a docker volume just automatically uses the correct permissions. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AuthorYess · 2023-12-23 08:59 You can export to folder structure based on your tags and other information like date. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- shadoodled · 2023-12-23 09:20 Paperless-ngx have 2 features to help you with the folder structure when it consumes each document. These helped me match my existing folder structure. * the [PAPERLESS_FILENAME_FORMAT](https://docs.paperless- ngx.com/advanced_usage/#file-name-handling) variable which also defines the default naming. This isn't limited to just the filename but also the folder structure. * [Storage Paths](https://docs.paperless- ngx.com/advanced_usage/#storage-paths) allow you to configure more precisely where each document is stored in the file system With regards to editing, paperless-ngx does not offer features for this. You will likely need to download-delete-upload anything that you wish to edit. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SkyeJM · 2023-12-23 09:32 I just setup Paperless-NGX last week. I had the same-ish problem. I had a folder setup, with for example my paychecks: /Documents/Employer Name/Paychecks/2023. I kinda liked this, but Paperless-NGX apparantly has a lot of custom settings for this. So now in Paperless my Employer is the Correspondent, the Document Type is Paycheck and it creates a folder for each year and renames the file to 12. December, 11 November,…. So the filepath now is /Docker/Paperless/Employer/Paychecks/2023 So bottom line my structure kinda stayed the same for most documents. You can configure this using the storage paths in Paperless. However since using Paperless i don’t use the documents folder anymore but just the paperless GUI with custom views saved. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PovilasID · 2023-12-23 09:35 People love paperless for doing a lot but they overlook it's flaws and get a lil preachy. These systems are not meant for docs that are to be edited... next cloud is better option for you. Now if you have something like a version of contract can connect using tags. There is also a way feed it like google drive folder or others but is a mess and it took me like a week to figure out... do not recomend. I personally use docspell it has worse UI but more features... like folders and it it also has an option to have multiple files per document. This could help with your versioning problem. Maybe paperless has a same feature too now but I did not see it when I was test-driving it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BeardedBearUk · 2023-12-23 10:05 Just to add another question to this. I recently set up paperles-ngx and mapped all volumes to an external drive that usually sleeps when not in use. Since installing paperless- ngx this drive never sleeps. Have I mapped something to this dive that is in constant use even when I am not using paperless-ngx? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UnexpectedAura · 2023-12-23 13:52 If you put your database there, you'll definitely see it not sleeping as there will be checkpoint files written by default every 5 minutes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BeardedBearUk · 2023-12-23 13:53 Thanks, I had a feeling that was where I had gone wrong ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ccigas · 2023-12-23 13:55 I’d have to look more into this. Was it a pain to set up? Guessing this is mentioned in the docs somewhere but can’t find it, any chance you know where? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ccigas · 2023-12-23 13:59 Just seems like a folder structure is much easier for first time set up and long term use. Going through each document that I currently have saved to say hey these are taxes or this is a contract is cumbersome to tag everything. I love the idea of paperless just not sure if I can get behind it 100%. I’m still going to attempt to like it though. I’m just going to have to make copies of all the docs and upload it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ccigas · 2023-12-23 14:00 Typically the db is with those media directories right? Wouldn’t be smart to put that somewhere due to that? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UnexpectedAura · 2023-12-23 14:06 It certainly _can_ be along side those media directories, there's no reason it has to though. If you're using the Docker route, it's a completely separate container utilizing a separate volume. The access patterns of a database server are typically much different from object storage, and due to that, you may decide you want a different type of storage. To be clear, my initial reply did assume the suggested install of utilizing a Postgres server as well. I'd imagine if you use SQLite, there's probably no issue there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SkyeJM · 2023-12-23 14:53 It wasn't a pain to setup! I installed the Docker container and first had a look around the UI and the options. Then i uploaded a first test document, created my correspondent and storage path etc and see how it looked. Uploaded a second document, did it again and so on. After about 2hours i had all my documents in there, exactly the way i wanted it and how i'm used to it (even improved my system). ​ But i tried it first with a few documents before just dumping everything in it. Regarding documentation, read through the Basic Usage and Configuration part and upload a few documents for testing it out. It will explain itself while you're doing it, it seems indimidating the documentation but actually it is not. Especially this part was helpful to understand the concept and way it works: [https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/advanced\_usage/#file-name- handling](https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/advanced_usage/#file-name- handling) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ccigas · 2023-12-23 15:02 Great thanks! I made a post on the GitHub for one issue I’m having during install so hopefully that will get situated and I can try it out. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PovilasID · 2023-12-23 15:13 I treat it as fall back search/archival. I have a good policy for folder structure that is much more efficient but it's because I have invested in putting my files in that order for years, so 9/10 times I will find it much faster than any search engine but sometimes... the document had an ambiguous orgin... I saved long time ago... then it is grate to be able to just search for it! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kweglinski · 2023-12-23 21:19 I haven't seen this mentioned in the comments so I'll share how I tried paperless before pulling the trigger. I've set my consumer folder as read only (for docker of course) and targetted the existing files I had. That way I was able to play around with paperless and not loose anything from existing structure. Moreover I was able to still put files the "old way". Once I was happy with setup I simply added write rights and voila full move has happened. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ccigas · 2023-12-23 21:25 That’s actually a really cool way of doing that. Did you try make edits on the files and see if that changed in paperless? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kweglinski · 2023-12-23 21:28 sorry but I didn't. In my case this is an archive and I think most of my documents are actually scans. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bking158 · 2023-12-23 23:05 You can do bulk editing. Take all your tax documents, upload them together and bulk tag them. Then do all your contracts and so on. Maybe that could work ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ccigas · 2023-12-24 03:02 That’s a good point. I think I’m just stuck on no access over a share in my file manager ---------------------------------------------------------------------- botterway · 2023-12-24 18:11 I don't like apps which ingest into their own storage, but I can't find an equivalent that'll just index the docs in-place to give a Web UI with full search. So as a compromise I keep my folder structure and then have a tool I wrote which I run every 6 hours, and it copies new and updated files into the consume folder. This is the tool. https://github.com/Webreaper/PaperlessCopier The downside is that all my documents are duplicated, but I have a NAS with 36tb of storage so it's a drop in the ocean. I don't back up the paperless data folder, as I can create it from scratch by running docker compose, and then rerunning the script. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ccigas · 2023-12-24 18:41 I was actually thinking about doing this! Might give your script a go or write my own. That’s not a bad idea to use the structure to tag everything so less hands on work. I don’t have to worry about the space either luckily. Not that I have a ton of docs though. Thanks! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- botterway · 2023-12-24 18:59 I'll try and upload a binary when I get a chance. What OS? I've built it for Linux, but can make it run on Mac or Windows.