Sane double sided scanning for a Mac?

[DebSoCal]

I’m looking for the ability to scan double sided documents without having to manually rearrange the pages after the second side is scanned.

Using the document feeder to scan the page fronts, then reloading the pages to scan the backs is fine. I just want the HP software to handle the reordering so the resulting file has fronts and backs in the proper order. HP Easy Scan did this perfectly on my previous system.

The challenges:

• My printer is an HP OfficeJet 8028e. It does not support auto-duplex scanning.

• My system is a MacBook Air running Sequoia 15.5. (My previous system was a different MacBook running Sonoma 14.5.)

• HP Easy Scan works OK under Sequoia for single sided scanning. However, when trying to scan double sided documents, it hangs after scanning the first page. (Double sided is specified by selecting “Scan both sides of page” in the preset.) This specification worked fabulously on my previous system. HP is no longer making upgrades for Easy Scan.

• HP Smart does not offer an option for double-sided scanning. I’m running version 18.10.1. The App Store says this is the latest available.

• HP Scan Extended is not supported for Mac.

Thanks much for your help.

[DebSoCal]

Although I’m still hoping HP will support double-sided scanning for non-duplex scanners, I’ve found a way to work around the issue. 

First, a HUGE thank you to whoever it was that mentioned PDFsam in one of the other threads on this topic. It solves the problem nicely.

PDFsam is a PDF manipulation tool. The basic level is free and is adequate for merging a file of page fronts with a file of page backs, creating a properly ordered PDF of a double sided document. PDFsam is available at https://pdfsam.org

The basic steps are to scan the fronts of pages into one file, scan the backs of pages (in reverse order) into a second file, then use PDFsam to “shuffle” the files together in the proper order.

Detailed steps:

• Download and install PDFsam

• Use HP Smart to scan the front sides of the double-sided document. Save this in a file “fronts.pdf”

• Use HP Smart to scan the back sides of the document. To do this on my printer, I remove the sheets after the first scan, spin them horizontally, and load them into the document feeder. This way the back side of the last page is on top of the stack of papers, and the first page is on the bottom. Scan these and save in a file “backs.pdf”

• Open PDFsam

• Under Merge Tools select Alternate Mix.

• Add fronts.pdf as the first file to be merged.

• Add backs.pdf as the second file. Click “Reverse” for backs.pdf.

• Specify a Destination File such as “merged.pdf”. Using the Browse feature will create the full path needed to specify the destination folder and filename.

• Click “Overwrite if already exists” if reusing an output file.

• Click Run

Voila! PDFsam shuffles fronts.pdf and backs.pdf to create merged.pdf with everything in the proper order. 

Thanks to everyone who posted and/or replied to other questions about double sided scanning. You helped me get to this solution.

My PDFsam window configured for merging files as I described:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For anyone interested, here are a few things I noticed I could do wrong and the symptoms they caused.

The first page of the output file is a “back” not a “front”. Happens when backs.pdf is the #1 file instead of fronts.pdf. Reorder the filenames in the PDFsam window.

The second page of the output file is the back of the last page, instead of the back of the first page. Forgot to click “Reverse” for the backs.pdf file. Click Reverse. Enable “Overwrite if already exists”. Rerun. 

The backs pages are upside down. When scanning the backs, I forgot to spin the stack of paper and loaded the pages “feet first” into the feeder. Need to get the backs.pdf pages up-side-up. Spin in the PDF viewer (such as Preview), or HP Smart (if the file’s still there), or re-scan. Then redo the merge.

After clicking Run, a message box “A file with the given …/What would you like to do?” appears. Forgot to allow overwriting the output file. Close the warning box, click “Overwrite if already exists”, and rerun. 

There’s nothing special about the file names “fronts”, “backs”, or “merged”. Just examples here. Files do need to be “.pdf”.

[Repairatrooper]

I have seen some software packages and hardware layouts that will only support double sided in these type of setups if you scan from the flat glass and turn the pages over to scan the back.