How To Use iPhone or Android Phone As Powerful Scanner With Microsoft Office Lens

When having a discussion or meeting, we will note down the idea on whiteboards or blackboards. Need a copy of this info in your smartphone for easy reference? Your smartphone’s camera can make a rough facsimile. But, now you can have better result with the new app release by Microsoft – Office Lens.

Office Lens is one of the most popular and free apps on the Windows Phone platform. Office Lens lets users turn their smartphone into a pocket scanner. By using Office Lens, users can scan document and convert the image to text. The text can then be exported and opened in the MS Office, MS Power Point, and send to Mail app or saved it as a PDF file. Office Lens can enhances your photo by cropping, sharpening and straightening it, so it looks more clear, readable and editable. Instead of these, Office Lens also can take pictures of things like business cards, sticky notes or sketches on lunch napkins. Now, Microsoft also released this powerful app for iPhone and Android users.

The app comes with three modes that help make captures look better:

• Photo mode: You can take pictures of people and scenery
• Document mode: Text is clear, readable and editable
• Whiteboard mode: glare and shadows disappear.

Features of Office Lens:

• With Whiteboard mode, Office Lens trims and cleans up glare and shadows
• With Document mode, Office Lens trims and colors images perfectly
• Pictures can be saved to OneNote, OneDrive or other cloud storage
• Choose to convert images to Word (.docx), PowerPoint (.pptx) or PDF (.pdf) files that are automatically saved to OneDrive

iPhone users can download the new Office Lens for free from Apple App Store, while Android users can download preview version with devices running Android Jelly Bean 4.1 and above.

For Android users, just sign up by joining a special Office Lens Android Preview Google+ community that has been set up for the app’s development. Android user can join the community and become a tester under the community. Once enrolled as a tester, you can download the Office Lens Preview from Google Play Store. You will receive a test version through app updates and some of which may be unstable and contain bugs, according to Microsoft. Hence, tester can either choose to leave the test at any time or return to the regular version of Office Lens Preview.