How to put searchable, accessible magazine articles on your computer

A couple of years ago, I got tired of having a whole shelf of magazine holders. It took forever to track down a beading project or gardening article, and I don’t even subscribe to that many magazines!

When I started using Evernote to keep up with receipts and emails and web clippings, magazine articles were the next addition. The basic edition of Evernote is free, and the program will find text even in PDFs and images, so it’s the perfect solution for articles and tutorials.

Here’s the steps to turn magazine articles into useful, searchable awesomeness. You’ll need:

- Magazines
- Rotary cutter
- Self-healing cutting mat
- Scanner
- Removable page tab stickies (optional)

1. Lay out your materials. You can mark the articles you want to save when you first read the magazine, or decide as you go. You can see where I’ve marked a few articles at the top of this mag with page tabs (which are reusable too).

2. Open the magazine to the first article you want to keep. Do this on a cutting mat or you will have a very sad table. Break the spine of the magazine by pressing down with your hands on the center of the magazine until it’s relatively flat.

3. Using the rotary cutter, carefully cut firmly in a straight line down the page, on the side your article starts, as close to the gutter — the center of the magazine — as possible.

4. Pull out and set aside the pages that were completely cut. The rotary cutter won’t cut through the entire magazine at once, so you may have to make several passes with it to get all your articles. Discard any pages with nothing but ads. If a page is almost cut but not quite, gently pull it out or use scissors to finish it.

5. Now you have a nice neat stack of pages. Straighten any that are bent or crumpled.

6. You’re done with the paper magazines! Go dump them in the recycling bin.

7. Scan the articles. If you have access to a sheet-fed scanner, this will go much faster. If using a sheet-fed scanner (check your workplace if you work in an office), trim off any jagged edges or paper streamers with scissors. Depending on the scanner you use, you may end up with PDFs or image files.

8. Now you should have a folder full of files on your computer. If you like, you can rename each file to reflect the article name, date, or source, although you can also do this later in Evernote.

9. Download and install Evernote.

10. Although you can drag and drop files into Evernote, the current version of has a really annoying bug that makes you drag and drop them one at a time, so it’s best to do it another way. In Evernote, go to Tools, then choose Import Folders. Click Add, then navigate to My Documents. Once you’ve clicked on My Documents, choose the Make New Folder button. Name the folder Evernote Auto-Import and then press OK. You can then choose whether you want to keep the original scans or have Evernote discard them. I’d recommend keeping them until you’re sure this system works for you. Press OK when you’re done.

11. Drag and drop the scans into the Evernote Auto-Import folder. Evernote will instantly add them to your notebook. From there, you can name and tag them and rearrange them any way you’d like. If your articles are image files, try dragging all the images for a single article into one note so they’re together.

It’s a good idea to give your articles some basic tags, but there’s no need to get too detailed, since you can search the text of the articles themselves. I’ve given mine tags for the type of project (beadweaving, necklace, mixed media); with those tags and the native search, I can do a search for, say, spiral necklace and see all the tutorials for spiral woven necklaces. Here are some of the tags I’ve used:

And that’s it! Now your magazine articles and tutorials are searchable, in one place, and not cluttering up your shelves. You can also add online tutorials and instructions to Evernote.