Microsoft Lens - PDF Scanner

Microsoft Corporation

About this app

Microsoft Lens (formerly Microsoft Office Lens) trims, enhances, and makes pictures of whiteboards and documents readable.
You can use Microsoft Lens to convert images to PDF, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files, digitize printed or handwritten text, and save to OneNote, OneDrive, or your local device. You can even import images that are already on your device using Gallery.

PRODUCTIVITY AT WORK  
• Scan and upload all your notes, receipts, and documents
• Capture whiteboard at end of the meeting to keep those action items on track
• Scan printed text or handwritten meeting notes to edit and share later
• Keep your business networking contacts handy by scanning business cards and saving them to your contact list
• Choose to save as PDF, Image, Word or PowerPoint formats into OneNote, OneDrive, or local device as location

PRODUCTIVITY AT SCHOOL 
• Scan classroom handouts and annotate them in Word and OneNote
• Scan handwritten notes to digitize and edit later (works with English only)
• Take a picture of the whiteboard or blackboard to reference later, even if you're offline
• Keep class notes and your own research organized with the seamless integration with OneNote
 
By installing the app, you agree to these terms and conditions: http://aka.ms/olensandterms.

Ratings and reviews

Once upon a time this worked perfectly, but now requires you to sign in, which doesn't work, and spits out the error "too many requests" (on my first sign in attempt). Why does everything have to be so complicated?; it used to work. Devs are obviously not very ept. Would recommend an alternative to Microsoft, such as Genius Scan

Useful tool when working with papers which you want to archive digitally. Found no way to start over with the scanning of a multi page document though, without cumbersome one bg one page deletion. It was also not clear to me that almost all save options aren't pdf. Would also be nice if there would be a "black, gray and white" filter.

This was my go-to app for scanning documents quickly and easily, for many years. Until 2025 arrived and Microsoft automatically linked the app to my work (Teams) account, and now personal files scanned through the app are being uploaded to my work, and then access to view or download or share the files is blocked (unless I wanted to share them with work colleagues who have no business seeing them). Well done for completely breaking a wonderful product and making it useless to me.

What’s new

Bug fixes and performance improvements.