Thursday, April 2, 2015

Microsoft launches portable scanning app Office Lens in preview

Last year, Microsoft launched an app called Office Lens to make Windows Phones portable scanners. Now the company is bringing the portable scanning frenzy to Android, albeit in a preview mode for now.

On Thursday, April 2, Microsoft officially unveiled Office Lens for Android and confirmed the app will have a public launch within the Google Play Store soon. For now, though, the app is available within a preview format. For those that are able to check out the app, and those who will wait for the public launch, Office Lens is able to turn your Android device into a portable scanner whenever you might need it, along with plenty of worthwhile features.

With your Android phone’s camera, you’ll be able to scan a document, business card, receipts, and other information you can find around you as well. With Microsoft’s Office Lens, this information can then be saved up to OneDrive or OneNote, which means it can effectively be opened up at later date from a wide range of devices.

Office Lens will automatically detect the edge of documents and other scanned items and crop the intended scan as necessary. It will also clean up the scanned image and enhance where necessary with the goal of making it more readable. Scanned images can then also be converted to PDF formats, Word documents or even a PowerPoint presentation.

With optical character recognition, Office Lens can let users search for certain words within OneNote or OneDrive, to quickly find a scan when they need to. The same technology can also be used to create a contact when a business card is scanned.

Here’s what you need to do to join in on the preview, if you so desire:

Go to the Google+ preview community: Offie Lens Android Preview Community
In the upper-right hand corner, click the Join Community button
Within the About This Community section, find the “Become a Tester” option and click that.
Follow the onscreen instructions and become a preview tester

Do you plan on checking out the new Office Lens for Android?