To do this, they have to join the Office Lens Android Preview community on Google+, sign up as a tester, and then download the app.

After scanning in the content, users can further edit the image or keep it as is and export it in the format of their choice. Notably, the Office Lens app for Android has been released as a preview, and users need to sign up to become testers to download the app. What is Microsoft Office Lens Microsoft Office Lens is a free app on Android and iOS that allows users to scan in copies of documents, photos, whiteboards, business cards, and similar content using their device’s camera. The app, which is free to download on both iOS ( App Store) and Android phones as of Thursday, can save an image as a Word file, PowerPoint presentation or PDF file, and uses optical character recognition to make the text searchable and ready for editing. Office Lens essentially turns a phone into a scanner, using the camera to take a photo of a menu, receipt or business card, for example, and instantly cropping the image and storing it in Microsoft's OneNote note-taking app, or OneDrive cloud storage app.

The app, called Office Lens, is already available for Windows Phone, but has had little exposure given platform's minute share of the smartphone market.īringing the app to iOS and Android is the latest sign of Microsoft's new strategy of putting its best software on as many devices as possible, regardless of whether they are running Windows. Microsoft said on Thursday it is bringing one of its most popular apps, which lets people take photos of a document and turn it into a editable file, to Apple's iPhone and Google's Android.

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