How to scan a document

1 First steps

Open Office Lens on your device. After giving it access to your camera, you’ll be taken to the capture screen. First, select the type of scan you wish to make – choose ‘Document’ for both photos and text documents to take advantage of the app’s auto-crop and straighten features.

2 Frame your document

Place your original on a flat surface, and position the camera above it – use the zoom slider to crop in if necessary, and wait for the focus to sharpen. The app will attempt to detect the document’s edges, placing a red rectangle around them – everything outside this will be cropped out.

3 Capture image

When you’re happy, tap the circular button to photograph the document. Office Lens will process the capture and you should see it’s automatically straight. If necessary, tap the rotate button to rotate it clockwise 90 degrees at a time until it’s positioned correctly on-screen.

4 Reframe photo

If the image isn’t perfectly straight or parts of it are missing, tap the crop button and tap-and-drag on the points to reframe the image – try to line up the edges of the crop marks to match the edges of the document as shown. Tap ‘Done’ and review the changes.

5 More editing tools

You’ll notice a Pen Tool in the top-right-hand corner – selecting this allows you to choose a colour marker to draw freehand over your photo or document (note the Undo button next to the Crop Tool). You could highlight a particular passage or person in a photo, for example.

6 Add more pages

If you’re scanning a multi-page document, tap the camera icon in the bottom-left corner to add your second page. A wastepaper bin icon appears next to the editing controls – tap this to delete the page if you make a mistake. Swipe left and right to move between pages.

7 Save your document

When you’re happy, tap the orange tick button at the bottom right of the screen. Tap on the title to change it to something more descriptive. Now choose what format you’d like to save your photo or document in – if necessary, you’ll be prompted to sign into your Microsoft account.

8 Access files

Files are stored on your device – access these later by tapping the ‘…’ button on the main screen, then ‘My Files’. Open a file from here and tap the share button to export it to another app. Copies are also uploaded to your Microsoft OneDrive account, if you’re signed in.