The advent of technology has changed a lot of things, making tedious tasks easier and faster. Back in the analogue age (and up till now), the process of scanning documents mostly requires the use of a scanner, but the case is different now as scanning documents can be done with your Android phone’s camera. One of the major benefits of scanning documents with your mobile phone is simply to save time. Imagine a scenario where you are asked to upload a scanned copy of a letter, receipt or billing statements. Instead of going to a print shop to do so, you can use your Android phone to scan the documents to PDF and mail it to your client. The Google Drive app seems to be the best choice for this job, so without further ado, here’s how to scan documents with your Android phone.
Scan a document
The Google Drive app comes pre-installed on pretty much every Android device, so it wouldn’t be hard to find. Hence to get this one going, simply dive into your device’s app drawer and fire up the Google Drive app. From here, tap the “+” button in the bottom right corner of Google Drive home screen to access the menu that will slide up. Now select “Scan” from the list of options.
On this stage, the Google Drive app may ask for permission to access your phone camera so ensure to tap “Allow” when the prompt appears. Next up, simply get the document you want to scan and fill it up on the screen. Make sure you’re steady, then take a photo of that document. You can shed more light to the document by using the flash icon next to the capture button.
Once the document is scanned, a preview of it will appear. Now notice that a part of the document is cut off. Don’t panic, we’re going to fix this by adjusting the scan area. So to get this one going, tap on the Crop tool and drag the dots to change the scanned area. When you’re done, tap the checkmark in the bottom right corner of the screen.
Immediately after scanning a document, the Google Drive app will present you with tools that can be used to make minor adjustment to your scanned document. The “+” icon is used to “add” more pages to a document, while the circular arrow at the middle lets you re-scan current page. At the top, we’ve the color palette icon which can be used to change the color ‘enhancment’ of a scanned page.
The three dots at the upper right corner lets you delete, rename or rotate a scan page if need be. The settings menu provide options to choose the paper size and paper orientation of a document when converted to PDF. You can also change the image quality of a scanned page if you wish. When you’re done with the adjustments, tap the checkmark or the “Done” icon to save the document in Google Drive.
Share the Scanned Document
Once the scanned documents is saved and uploaded to Google Drive, they will be made available in PDFs. Now you can share your Scanned Document accross to your clients. To achieve this, tap the three dots beside the scanned document, then select the “Send a copy” option from the slide up menu that will appear. You can even “copy the link” to clipboard and share it to your clients.
Wrapping Up
Scanning documents with your Android phone is pretty simple, and one of its major benefits is that your documents are scanned to PDFs. For iOS users, you can use the in-built notes app on your iPhone or iPad to scan documents easily. Scanner Pro is also recommended for iPhone users, that’s if you want to enjoy robust and extra features. So that’s how to scan documents with your mobile phone.