How should I prepare paper documents before feeding them into a scanner?

Good preparation is what separates a clean, trustworthy digital file from a batch you have to rescan. The goal is simple: every page should feed smoothly and capture completely, with nothing lost, doubled, or obscured. Spending a few minutes per folder up front saves hours of rework later.

Plan before you touch paper

Decide what you are scanning and why. Confirm the records are eligible for digitization under your retention schedule, and determine whether the originals may be destroyed afterward or must be retained. Capture basic identifying information (folder title, date range, source) so the resulting images can be named and indexed consistently.

Clean and repair the documents

Physical condition drives image quality. Work through each stack and:

• Remove all staples, paper clips, binder clips, and sticky notes.
• Unfold corners and flatten creases or rolled edges.
• Mend tears with archival repair tape and back fragile or torn pages with a carrier sheet.
• Set aside oversized, bound, photographic, or very delicate items for flatbed or specialized capture rather than the automatic feeder.

Organize and orient

Put pages in their intended reading order and confirm consistent orientation so the scanner does not produce upside-down or sideways images. Note any double-sided pages so you select duplex capture. Use separator sheets or barcodes if your system uses them to mark where one document or file ends and the next begins.

Check for completeness and legibility

Verify that nothing is missing, that faint or carbon copies are still readable, and that handwriting and stamps will reproduce. Flag pages too light, too dark, or too damaged to capture reliably; these may need higher resolution, grayscale instead of bitonal, or manual handling.

Quality control after the first pages

Scan a sample, then inspect for skew, cropping, double feeds, streaks, and unreadable text before running the full batch. Follow recognized imaging benchmarks for resolution and color so files meet preservation and access needs over time.

These habits keep your captured records faithful to the originals and defensible as a record. For broader guidance, see the digitization and imaging hub.