For a humankind going paperless , there ’s still an frightening tidy sum of paper around . And when you ’re in a merging with a mathematical group of people , scribble ideas and diagrams on a whiteboard is still more efficient than trying to join forces on one data processor .
But when it ’s prison term to really do work with all that theme and all those whiteboard images , Microsoft has a newfangled way to get them into your computer and ready to edit out in the Office apps you use every Clarence Day . It ’s calledOffice Lens , andit launched Thursday for the iPhone .
Office Lens automatically adjusts , straightens , and crops text file . ( snap to enlarge . )
Office Lens is a free app that ferment like scanning apps you may have used already — you expend your iPhone ’s tv camera to capture a document or a whiteboard , and they ’re hive away in the cloud and made searchable thanks to OCR . The difference with Office Lens is that you do n’t just get flat image of your documents . Office Lens converts the mental image to editable Word , PowerPoint , and PDF single file , in aboriginal Office formats , save to OneDrive so they ’re accessible from any other machine .
Office Lens aims to make the process as easy as possible . The seizure covert has three modes : Photo , Document , and Whiteboard . In any mood , the app recognizes the corner of what you ’re photograph , so you do n’t have to crop or straighten anything manually — you’re able to even dart at an slant . There ’s still a craw shaft if you only take part of what was captured , or if the app gets it wrong . If you swipe to Whiteboard mode , the app will assay to remove glare and phantasma .
Whiteboard images become editable PowerPoint files . ( Click to enlarge . )
Once the capture looks good , you tap Done to see a inclination of export options . pic are exported in JPG data formatting or PDF . papers can become Word ( DOCX ) files or PDF . Whiteboard images become PowerPoint ( PPTX ) or PDF files . you may send these to OneNote or OneDrive , or even bring through images to your Camera Roll or sequester files to a new email .
Yup , editable single file . Typed text becomes editable text , ready to be cut and pasted and changed — and dare we say tour - checked . When you commute a whiteboard chalk out into a PowerPoint file , every line you quarter becomes a PowerPoint drawing object that you could recolor , resize , move , and edit . That ’s great for line and boxes and arrows , but if your whiteboard has a lot of textbook on it , it ’ll probably be faster to just retype it — or use the lantern slide as - is in your demonstration .
Once your picture is in PowerPoint , you’re able to slide each object around , admit letter . But you ca n’t just pick out a whole word and retype it .
If you appropriate a byplay scorecard and send it to OneNote , all the contact entropy is parse out , and Microsoft ’s web log billet articulate you could save this contact to your headphone , but work out out how took a few effort . Here ’s the magic : Below the ( editable ) lean of contact info , you ’ll see a piffling icon that represents a VCF file . Tap that to open it , and then you ’ll see options to Create New Contact and Add to Existing striking , as well as a Share button to air the VCF file elsewhere ( Messages , Mail , Evernote , whatever compatible options you have on your iPhone ) .
you may scan business cards into your contact , but it ’s a two - step : Office Lens to OneNote , then find the VCF file in OneNote ( encircle here ) and tap it for the options to tot up it to your phone ’s contacts .
Office Lens is costless in the App Store , and requires a devoid Microsoft account , so it can send images to OneDrive and OneNote .
