KeepsakePractical answers about keeping documents
Written to be useful whether or not you ever buy anything from us.
Where can I find practical guidance on keeping family documents?
Keepsake publishes 19 guides answering the questions people actually ask about household documents: what to keep, how to store them so a family can find them after a death, whether to photograph a passport, how to organise everything without paying a subscription, what happens when a vault company shuts down, which UK, Pakistani and Gulf documents expire, and how to get a folder of documents out of Google Drive, Trustworthy, Everplans or paperless-ngx and into something else. Each is written to be useful without buying anything.
What documents should a family keep?
The four groups, what stays on paper, how long to keep each one, and the mistakes that make the whole exercise useless.
How to store documents so your family can find them
The failure is access, not storage. One findable index, two routes in, and a rehearsal you do while you are still here.
Is it safe to keep a passport photo on your phone?
What the bio page actually exposes, where camera-roll copies really end up, and how to keep one properly instead of not at all.
A document vault that works without an account
Three different things "no account" can mean, which options genuinely deliver it, and what you take on when nobody holds your key.
What happens to my files if a vault company shuts down?
Four ways products end, the one factor that decides your outcome, and the four questions to ask before you upload anything.
How to organise documents without a subscription
A complete system with free software: four folders, one naming rule, your phone as a scanner — and where paid tools genuinely earn their money.
UK document renewal dates and how to track them
What expires, how much lead time to leave, and the two rules that catch people out — passport carry-over and the ten-year issue date.
Pakistan and Gulf document renewals
CNIC, NICOP, Emirates ID and Iqama — and the dependency chain where one lapse blocks the next two.
How to search inside scanned documents, offline
OCR on your own machine, an invisible text layer inside the PDF, and the search you already have — no server, no upload, no subscription.
Syncing documents between your PC and phone with your own cloud
Encrypt before it leaves the machine and let the provider be a courier — plus the reason sync is not backup.
Have Keepsake check your mailbox for documents
Your own IMAP mailbox, checked from your own device: attachments filed, nothing deleted, and no forwarding address at a company.
Let an assistant read your vault, on your machine
A local, read-only MCP server: your assistant answers from your real documents with nothing uploaded, no port opened, and every read in your audit log.
Unlock your vault with a passkey or a security key
The difference between a key that opens encryption and a key that opens a login — and why a device is never allowed to be your only way in.
Import a folder of documents with its metadata
The sidecar format: one CSV beside the files, nine columns, and a folder of anonymous scans becomes a filed archive with working reminders.
Import a Google Drive or OneDrive folder
Get the folder onto your disk and import it — no sign-in, no connector, and why we deliberately do not ship a Connect to Drive button.
Export your documents from Trustworthy
What the download actually contains, the expiry dates that are not in it, and the checklist to run before you cancel anything.
Export your documents from Everplans
The documents come out as files; the answers you typed in do not. What to save first, and what happens to headings no vault has a category for.
How do I make a document app file things automatically?
Ordered rules that match a document as it arrives and file it — previewed before they run, and unable to delete, move or share anything.
Export from paperless-ngx, and import the result
What document_exporter writes, why the manifest refers to tags by number, and the field holding the OCR text of everything you own.
How we write these
Three rules, and they are visible in the structure of every page rather than being a promise made here.
- The answer comes first and mentions no product. The block at the top of each guide is the actual answer to the question in the title. If it is all you read, you should still be able to act on it.
- The product appears once, at the end, under a heading that says whose it is. Everything above "Where Keepsake fits" has to stand up with that section deleted — and where free tools do the job as well, those pages say so and name them.
- Guidance we cannot stand behind does not go in. Renewal periods and legal points are marked as needing confirmation with the issuing authority, because rules in that area change and a confidently wrong date on this page could cost somebody a passport.
The same reasoning drives the comparison pages, which say where rivals beat us, and the claim ledger, which lists what Keepsake does not have alongside what it does.