You may have scanned countless documents at work. The problem is that you only have one scanner there. So, you and your officemates have to take turns. You may be asking if there's a more convenient way to do this. Like, can you scan documents without a scanner? You are so lucky because the answer is yes. You can use scanner apps to scan documents using your phone's camera.
What app should you use? And how to use that scanner app? Don't worry. It is very easy. And in this article, we will teach you how to scan documents without a scanner. Say goodbye to hassle; say hello to efficiency.
In this article
The Traditional Way of Digitizing Documents
Before scanner apps, we only had scanners. You use these machines to convert documents into digital files. There are a few problems with that. One, you need to buy a scanner. Also, you need to have space at your home or office for the machine. And if there's only one scanner and many people need to use it, there would be problems. Furthermore, what happens when the machine malfunctions or if there's a power interruption?
That is why using document camera scanners is now preferred. As long as your mobile phone is okay, you can use these apps to digitize documents. It is a more efficient method.
How To Scan Without a Scanner
As mentioned above, there are now apps that let you scan documents without a scanner. These apps utilize your phone's camera to convert printed documents into digital. Then, you can easily transfer the file from your phone to your computer or laptop.
One option is Wondershare PDFelement for Mobile. It is a mobile PDF solution with document scanning capabilities, so you can digitize printed documents with your phone and continue working with the resulting PDF on mobile.
How To Send Your Scanned Files to Your Computer
You can transfer a scanned file to your computer with a connector cable, cloud storage, or email. If you do not have a cable with you, emailing the scanned PDF to yourself is a simple option.
Here's how to do that:
Step 1 Save the scanned document as a PDF on your phone.
Step 2 Attach the PDF to an email and send it to an email account you can open on your computer.
Step 3 Open the email on your computer and download the file.
How To Make Scanned Documents Editable
Scanned documents are saved as PDFs. However, they are still pictures. You can't edit their content unless you use OCR tools on them. These tools convert the image text to real text, allowing you to edit.
The good news is that there's a very reliable app on iPhone that can perform OCR on your document. Furthermore, it allows you to edit the file with its many capabilities. This app is Wondershare PDFelement for iOS. Here's a tutorial on how to use it on scanned files.
Step 1: Install Wondershare PDFelement for iOS.
Step 2: Subscribe to the Premium version. The OCR feature is not available for free users.
Step 3: Open the scanned document in PDFelement.
Step 4: Tap the three dots button on the upper right corner of the screen.
Step 5: Select Recognize.
Alternatively,
Step 1: Go to the Tools tab on PDFelement for iOS.
Step 2: Select OCR PDF > select the PDF you want to make editable.
Step 3: Tap OCR PDF > Next.
Step 4: Select the language the text in the scanned document is written in. Tap Next.
Step 5: Wait for the notice that the file is ready for editing to appear.
Conclusion
You do not need a dedicated scanner to digitize printed documents. A mobile document scanning app can use your phone's camera to capture pages and save them as digital files, which you can then transfer to your computer when needed.
If you need to make the scanned document editable, Wondershare PDFelement for iOS can use OCR to recognize text in scanned PDFs so you can continue editing the content.
