how to digitize old journals and diaries, page by page.

photos usually exist in more than one place. a journal almost never does. a leaking roof, a move, or a box that gets thrown out by mistake, and years of thoughts are gone for good. a digital copy won't replace the notebook, and it shouldn't. it just means the words survive if the paper doesn't.

you don't need special equipment. a phone, a window and some patience will do most of it. the aim is a clear, complete copy of every page, named so you always know when it was written.

before you start

• the notebook stays the original. scanning is about making a copy, not replacing anything. keep every journal once it's scanned.
• be gentle with old bindings. never press a book flat to get a better picture. a cracked spine or a loose page is a bigger loss than a slightly curved scan.
• one folder per journal. make a top folder like journals, with one folder inside for each notebook. you'll name them properly in step 4.

step 1: gather the journals and put them in order

bring every notebook, diary and loose page you can find to one table. then sort them roughly by when they were written. the first and last dated entries in each one are usually enough to place it.

write a simple list as you go: journal 1, march 1998 to january 1999, and so on. if you want to label the notebooks themselves, use a slip of paper tucked inside the cover rather than writing on them. the list tells you when you're done, and it makes the naming later easy.

step 2: set up a simple scanning spot

good light does more for a scan than any app. a few things help:

• daylight, not sunlight. a table near a window gives soft, even light. direct sun makes harsh shadows and glare on glossy pages.
• turn the flash off. it bounces off the page and washes out pencil and faint ink.
• a plain, dark background. a dark cloth or sheet of card under the notebook helps the app find the edges of the page.
• hold the phone flat above the page. resting your elbows on the table, or the phone on a stack of books, keeps the pictures sharp and square.
• support the spine. for a tightly bound book, open it only as far as it comfortably goes, prop each side on a folded towel or a book, and scan one page at a time.

step 3: scan the pages with your phone

both kinds of phone already have a document scanner built in, which straightens and crops each page for you.

• on an iphone, open the notes app and start a new note. tap the attachment button, then scan documents. hold the phone over the page and it captures automatically, or tap the shutter yourself. drag the corners if needed, tap keep scan, and carry on page by page. tap done when the notebook is finished.
• on an android phone, open the google drive app and tap the camera button at the bottom right. take a picture of the page, use crop & rotate if needed, add the next page, and tap done. you can then name the file and choose whether to save it as a pdf or as jpg images.
• with a flatbed scanner, loose pages and letters lie flat and come out beautifully. 300 dpi is a common setting for text, and a little higher does no harm for small handwriting.

one notebook per scan works well: a single pdf for each journal, in page order. it's much easier to keep track of than hundreds of separate pictures.

and scan the things tucked inside. a letter, a pressed flower, a concert ticket: they belong to the page they were found on, so scan them right after it.

step 4: name each file by when it was written

this is the step that matters most later. a scan carries the date you scanned it, not the date the words were written. if the file is called scan 0042.pdf, nobody will know in ten years that it holds the summer you turned seventeen.

name each file with the dates it covers, earliest first, so files sort themselves in order:

• 1998-03 to 1999-01, journal 1.pdf
• 1999-02 to 1999-11, journal 2 (blue notebook).pdf
• 2004-06, travel journal, scotland.pdf

writing years and months as numbers, with the year first, is what keeps them in the right order on any computer.

step 5: check every page

• count the pages. the number of pages in the scan should match the written pages in the notebook.
• flip through the whole file. look for blurry pages, cut-off edges and pages that were skipped or captured twice.
• zoom in on the faint ones. pencil and faded ink are the first to go unreadable. rescan those pages in better light.
• tick it off your list. a journal is only done once its scan is checked.

if you'd like it as typed text

a scan is a picture of the page, so you can't search it for words. turning it into typed text is optional, and it's worth knowing the limits. google docs can pull text out of an image or pdf: in google drive on a computer, right-click the file, choose open with, then google docs. google's own help page says it works best with sharp, evenly lit images of common printed fonts, and files of 2 mb or less. handwriting is much harder for it, so expect gaps.

for most handwritten journals, the kindest approach is to type up a few favorite entries by hand, or read them aloud and record yourself. either way, keep the scans as the true copy, and treat any typed text as a bonus. and since diaries are private, think about who can see a file before you upload it anywhere.

keep the copies private, and in more than one place

a single copy of your scans on a single laptop is still one spill away from gone. the same 3-2-1 habit from backing up family videos works here: three copies, on at least two kinds of storage, with one kept somewhere other than your home.

journals are more private than most photos, so choose those places with care. a drive in a drawer at home, a second one with someone you trust, and a private online copy only you can open is a good shape for it. some people also leave a short note with their important papers saying where the journals are and what they'd like to happen to them one day.

keep the paper, too

once a notebook is scanned, put it back somewhere cool, dry and dark, rather than an attic or a damp basement where heat and moisture swing through the year. a plain box on a shelf in a lived-in room is a good home.

then put it all in order

journals make the most sense next to the photos and videos from the same years. once everything has its own checked folder, how to organize old digital photos, by when they happened walks through bringing it together. if some of those years are still stuck on an old phone or a hard drive in the closet, start there.

where treasure box fits

treasure box is the private life archive we're building to hold a whole life in one place, ordered by when things happened. the first version starts with photos and videos: you bring them in from your browser, it reads the date each one was taken, and lays them out on one private timeline. journals and audio are part of the bigger idea, and they're on the list for later.

until then, the careful scans and dated file names you make today are exactly what any archive will need. if that sounds like the kind of home you'd want for them, see how treasure box works or read our privacy promises.

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