Scan documents with your phone!

Have you ever wanted to scan a document and send it by email? Normally, you would power on your computer, put the document in the scanner, launch the scanner software, scan the document, save the file and then email it. Long process right?

Wouldn’t it be simpler to just take a photo using our mobile phones and email it?

It would, but there are several issues:

• The background (we want only the document, not the table on which it’s on)
• The angle – no matter how hard we try and take the photo straight, it always looks skewed or has a shadow.
• Photos are saved as jpeg files. We would like to have PDF files.

What’s the Solution?

Microsoft has released an app called Office Lens. It’s available for both iOS & Android.

It’s really simple to use – you start the app, position the camera above the document and click! It will straighten the document and remove the background automatically!

Once you are satisfied with the scanned document, click on Done.

You will then be prompted to save the document.

The document can be saved to any of the locations listed below. You may also save the document to other locations by tapping the “More Apps” options at the bottom.

Also, if you save to Microsoft Word, the document can be edited.

In some cases you could even print the document directly to your printer. This would require further settings which are beyond the scope of this post.

Do I need this?

If you are someone who:

1. Requires scanned copies of documents
2. Emails documents
3. Edits documents in Microsoft Word
4. Wants to photocopy a document

then the answer is “Yes!”