I have to admit that originally I had planned to feature another tool today. Once I caught wind of this nifty tool, I just had to share it instead.
Behold Microsoft Office Lens.
(This is not to be confused with the forthcoming Microsoft HoloLens which appears to be their answer to the latest wave of VR viewers.)
Using your smartphone camera, you can capture, crop, and save documents and even whiteboard images as PDFs or Doc files.
Wait, that’s not new at all.
You’re right. This is nothing new indeed, however this tool offers a few things that already existing phone scanners like CamScanner do not: It connects to the Microsoft Office online ecosystem. Now, your images can be swiftly uploaded to your Office365 account as the document type of your choosing, as part of a OneNote entry, or you can include it in your Microsoft Docs.com account.
Docs.com? What is that? Where did that come from?
Great question! Apparently Docs.com, like Office Lens, and other MS products making it into the public realm of late was developed years ago within Microsoft’s Fuse Labs. It is only now that Lens and Docs are out of Beta and open for the rest of us to use. Docs.com, which I may explore further in a forthcoming blog post.
Since this is the first day I have even known that Lens existed, I cannot elaborate on how well the app works. That said, I will be sure to test it thoroughly and follow up with my thoughts after I have been able to see how well it plays with the rest of the apps on my phone.
Let me know what you think!
Until next time,
Ms. W.
**DISCLAIMER: I would like to give credit to Microsoft, from whom I acquired all of these photos. In doing so, I only wish to provide visual reference to this particular app being featured and have no intent to infringe upon any copyrights.**
