History of Canofiles

The Canofile electronic filing system was introduced in 1989 by Canon, Inc and consisted of proprietary software and hardware. Considered revolutionary at the time, this system utilized double-sided magneto optical (MO) disks that could hold up to 6,500 digitized pages on each side. The Canofile system enabled users to replace an entire filing cabinet with just one Canofile disk. All of the related imaging functions were conducted on the Canofile 250 machine. These included scanning, viewing, printing* and operation of the Canofile MO502 disks.

The only downside to all of this functionality residing on one machine is the dependence on that machine. Once Canon discontinued support for this product line, many organizations were faced with the stark reality that their vital information was stored on a format that would quickly become inaccessible. Since the software was also proprietary, their vital records could not be easily transferred off of this format for use in other programs.

One evolution of the 1989 Canofile 250 system was Canofile for Windows (CFW). This was software written specifically for Microsoft Windows based PCs that could manipulate the data stored on Canofile MO disks and Canofile CDs (Allbase). While this solution eliminated the dependence of some organizations on the original hardware, it did not resolve the issue of the proprietary Canofile format. Unfortunately, even these more recently updated CDs are no longer supported by Canon.

As time progresses, components that were assembled in 1989 are bound to fail. The fact is that more and more Canofile machines and disks are breaking down on a daily basis. With no replacements available, your records are at serious risk. The best solution is to convert this data into a format that is non-proprietary and that will be relevant and accessible for many years to come.

*Canon Fileprint 100 required