How to scan documents from Android phone and iPhone

With a modern mobile phone, there is no need to have a separate scanner to simply scan documents and then send them: scanning with enough quality for many tasks can be done on the phone itself using special applications, and sometimes even without them.

In this review: The best free ways to scan documents from your Android phone or iPhone, a summary of the additional features of the scanning application and a video that clearly shows the entire process.

Microsoft Lens, Office, and OneDrive

Many of Microsoft's mobile apps for Android and iOS have a built-in scanning feature. Microsoft Lens (formerly Office Lens) was originally developed for this purpose, but the feature was later added to the aplicación móvil as well as the OneDrive cloud storage app. The use of the scanning function in all three cases is very similar, I will show an example for Microsoft Lens:

1. On the home screen, click "Start Scan" and point the camera at the document. Preferably, it should be well lit. A frame will appear around the document.
2. Press the button to take a photo.
3. You will then be asked to change the scope of the document if necessary and in general you can save the scanned document, but I recommend that you go into "Filters", among which one of the first is a filter that removes shadows unnecessary waste and paper imperfections (shown later in the video).
4. On the same screen, you can also perform other editing actions on the scan and, if necessary, add a new page to the scanned PDF using the "Add" button.
5. When done, save the scanned file (PDF by default).
6. Note that on the screen with the capture button when you focus on a document, you can select "actions" at the bottom and, for example, perform text recognition to copy and paste into the document: it does not work perfectly, but it can be useful.

This is pretty much what the scan looks like in other Microsoft applications.

In Office, for example, on the home screen, simply select the "Actions" tab and then select "Scan to PDF." And in OneDrive, you need to click the add file button and select "Scan."

Official links to application stores where the described tools can be ed:

Adobe Scan

Adobe Scan is my preferred application for scanning documents, all the basic functions are free, but registration is required. It is very easy to use, even a novice can handle it:

1. Start scanning and point the camera at the document, the app will detect the edges and take a photo.
2. The next screen will show the result with the document page limits, you can change them or re-scan the document. If you are satisfied, click "Continue".
3. You will return to the scan page to automatically scan the next page of the document. If you don't need to, click the document thumbnail in the lower right corner to preview and edit. The document is now "restored" and aligned, usually no further action is necessary, just save it.
4. By default, the scans of your documents are saved in Adobe Cloud, but if you want to save the PDF on your device or save your scans as JPG, from the home page of the app, open the documents menu and select the desired item.

You can Adobe Scan for free in the app stores:

CamScanner

There are many other applications of scan for android and iPhone that are not from such major developers. Among the applications with the best reviews is CamScanner.

Using the application should be easy for most s: choose "Smart Scan" (or another action, but note that some of them are only available in the version), scan the document with your camera phone, adjust it if necessary and put it away.

Scan into your phone's camera app

On some mobile phones, the built-in camera application is capable of simple document scanning. For example, if you are using a Samsung phone, when you point the camera at a document, a "Scan" button will appear (assuming the phone has "recognized" that you are pointing at the document) which, when touched, will scan it.

The result can be saved. This means that you have less scanning capacity - you only get an aligned rectangular photo of the document, but for many tasks it may be sufficient.

Institutional

If you use any other tool to scan documents from your phone, I would appreciate your comment on the article below: perhaps the information will be useful for someone else.