Turn your paper clutter into digital files with Microsoft’s Office Lens iOS and Android app

microsofts office lens scanner ios android offcie — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Microsoft is continuing to embrace other platforms outside of its own. The computing giant, which recently migrated its Office suite and launched an email app for iOS and Android, is bringing its Office Lens app to the competing mobile operating systems as well.

Office Lens is Microsoft’s answer to the problem of paper — the app turns your phone’s camera into a scanner. Point it at a physical document, and the app digitizes it. However, it’s not just snapping a photo — Office Lens actually converts the paper into an editable document. Thanks to optical character recognition (OCR), Office Lens reproduces the paper with editable text, tables, and photos. It can create full-fledged Word, PowerPoint, and PDF files from a scan.

Introducing Office Lens for iPhone

Of course, the documents can be saved as just standard images if you prefer — a perfect solution for storing receipts or taking snapshots of a white board to keep a copy of notes. Outside of recognizing text, Office Lens also identifies the edges of a document and automatically crops it so you won’t have extra space. The Office Lens can also serve as a powerful tool. Outside of just reproducing documents, it can also scan business cards and glean contact information, which is then added to your phone.

Office Lens is available for download for iOS already. Android users are stuck in a preview phase, but you can get in on the beta by signing up in the community page. The official app should be available to all in the near future.

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