<p>My daughter is planning to apply for some summer internships that require transcripts and letters of recommendation to be sent by e-mail. Fax and postal mail are not acceptable.</p>
<p>I don’t want to have to buy her a scanner, so I’m looking for an alternative way to turn her hard copy documents into PDFs. </p>
<p>Are there commercial services that you can pay to scan a single document into a computer and turn it into a PDF for you, so that it can be sent as an e-mail attachment? I realize that there are business-to-business services that perform this sort of work on a large scale, but I don’t know where to find a company that would do a very small-scale job for an ordinary non-commercial customer.</p>
<p>She doesn’t seem to have a friend with one, and neither do I.</p>
<p>I don’t think this issue comes up much unless you’re applying for internships with federal government agencies in Washington, where there are still huge delays with postal mail related to the restrictions imposed after the anthrax incident seven years ago. But those are exactly the kind of internships she’s applying to.</p>
<p>I would ask at your local library. They may not have one out for the public, but possibly in back for employees to use. You also might ask places like the UPS store or mail boxes etc. store.</p>
<p>Kinkos would definitely be able to do this. If they have a digipath (they would because they use Xerox equipment) or scanner, they can do it in for you. Then if she has a jump drive, she should ask them if they would just put it on her jump drive (they would charge her ~$25 to burn to a CD).</p>
<p>Are you sure no one has one? Most printers these days are all in ones - that means they can fax, scan and print. A lot of people don’t pay attention to the other features when all they do is print. Worth checking. In addition to Kinko’s or the library, if you can wait for the HS to be back in session, the career center may help. At ours they help graduates, too.</p>
<p>Pardon my ignorance, but is a “jump drive” the same thing as a “flash drive” or “memory stick”? We have plenty of those.</p>
<p>We also have a Kinkos near our home, though I’m not sure if there’s one near her campus. But the latter doesn’t really matter. She’s home now for Winter Break and will probably fill out many of her applications during the break, even if she doesn’t mail them until later.</p>
<p>Thanks, everybody, for all the advice, especially about Kinkos. I haven’t used their services before, so I didn’t realize how many different services they offer.</p>
<p>You might think about buying a scanner. I love mine. It’s a Canon LiDE and has a thin profile, connects to my computer with a USB thingy. I can scan documents directly into PDF form. I can scan photos, etc. Comes in handy when filling out rebate paperwork.</p>
<p>I especially like to scan articles from magazines that I want to save. Then throw the magazine away. Saves on storage…</p>
<p>We have a scanner but use it rarely (a few times per year). I keep it in storage as it would consume too much space on my desk at home for little use. I have an 8 MP digital camera that I use to take pictures - it’s much faster than using a scanner, stores away in a book case and I can just take out the flash card to get the images. I can also leave the images in the camera for several months.</p>
<p>zzzz, I have full Acrobat. I can take a Word document in my computer and create a PDF of it.</p>
<p>Scanning a document into the computer is a different process.</p>
<p>However, I inquired at a local FedEx Kinkos today and learned – as several posters on this thread suggested – that they do indeed provide the service that my daughter needs. </p>