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These can be inserted into OneNote as images, the company says. You can also convert the images you scan of paper files and whiteboards into Microsoft Office formats and more, including Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and even PDFs and JPGs. Like most scanner apps, Office Lens identifies the text on the images it captures using optical character recognition (OCR), which allows you to later locate the file in question using keyword search in OneNote or in Microsoft’s cloud storage site, OneDrive.
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And much like Evernote’s Scannable app, for example, it exists more as an add-on or complement to a larger, more prominent product – in Microsoft’s case, OneNote. Office Lens’ core functionality itself is not all that different from a number of document-scanning applications on the mobile app stores today, like Scanner Pro, TinyScan Pro, Scanbot and more. The app, which allows users to snap photos of paper documents, receipts, business cards, menus, whiteboards, sticky notes and more, was first launched a year ago as an application designed only for Windows Phone devices.īut in conjunction with the company’s newer strategy to embrace other platforms outside its own, the app has now arrived on Apple’s App Store and on Android phones, where it will sit alongside dozens of other Microsoft applications, including Office and Outlook. Microsoft today launched Office Lens, a mobile document scanner app that works with OneNote, for iOS and Android smartphones.
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