Patent ID: 8793220

Claim:
A method for providing unconscious archiving and printing of documents in an automated office environment in which electronic documents are transferred to a printing engine and having at least one memory disposed to receive electronic copies of the documents for archiving, the method comprising: printing document data using the print engine in response to a single user input command received by an application program to print the document data without indication to the user of additional processing of the document data; detecting activity of a device driver to transfer document data from the application program to the print engine; in response to detecting the transfer of the document data from the application program to the print engine by the device driver, capturing a copy of the document data in a document delivery path from the application program to the print engine as the document data is transferred to the print engine, wherein capturing the copy of the document data as the document data is transferred to the print engine further comprises: diverting the document data from the document delivery path prior to receipt of the document data by the print engine, determining when all data corresponding to the document data has been diverted, generating the copy from the diverted document data based on the determination, and releasing the document data back into the document delivery path for transfer to the print engine after the copy of the document data has been generated; determining the copy of the document data corresponds to a new version of an archived document; generating version data that links the new version of the archived document to the archived document; generating an image of the document from the copy of the document data for storage in the memory; generating index information that comprises at least one of keyword, text or symbol data appearing in the copy of the document data; and causing the copy of the document data, the version data, the generated image of the document, and the index information to be stored in the memory to perform the unconscious storing transparently to the application program, and without input from the user and without notification to the user of the archiving of the document data notwithstanding the single user input command, and the aforementioned steps store electronic documents when printed.