Microsoft releases yet another useful app for its Windows Phone; this time the company delivers “Office Lens”. Lens is your new digital scanner that you can carry everywhere in your pocket, thanks to Microsoft’s optical character recognition (OCR) technology.
Basically Office Lens for Windows Phone enables you to use the camera in your smartphone to transcribe text from photos, for example, whiteboards, business cards and printed documents. Photos that are saved automatically to OneNote for later access.
Microsoft is focusing Office Lens for three main modes: whiteboard, document, and photo. First, in whiteboard, Lens will make the photo more readable, trims and fixes glare, shadows, angles. Second, in document the Windows Phone app basically fixes the same things as whiteboard, but optimized for documents. And third, Photo, when you take a picture is store in your computer and in OneNote via OneDrive, and then the image becomes searchable with Office Lens OCR technology.
SEE ALSO: Windows 8.1 now recognizes text within photos through SkyDrive OCR technology
Office Lens is a free app you can download from the Window Phone Store, but… you’ll need a Windows Phone, Microsoft Account, and OneNote to access the data. Keep in mind that the Microsoft Account must be associated with the account already in your smartphone.
Source Microsoft
Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade. Mauro has over 14 years of experience writing comprehensive guides and creating professional videos about Windows and software, including Android and Linux. Before becoming a technology writer, he was an IT administrator for seven years. In total, Mauro has over 20 years of combined experience in technology. Throughout his career, he achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft (MSCA), Cisco (CCNP), VMware (VCP), and CompTIA (A+ and Network+), and he has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years. You can follow him on X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn and About.me. Email him at [email protected].