Microsoft has been on a big app roll lately, releasing the Outlook email app on iOS and Android and then buying popular calendar app Sunrise. Now Microsoft is continuing its multi-platform app efforts with the release of a new Office app.
Office Lens is now available on iOS and Android. The app lets you take a photo of a receipt, business card, whiteboard, or a similar item and then save that information digitally. Office Lens will crop and enhance the document and then let you save it to OneNote or your Photo Library, email it, convert it into a Word or PowerPoint doc, or export it as a PDF with searchable text thanks to optical character recognition tech. You can also use Office Lens to photograph business cards and generate contact info.
Office Lens has been on Windows Phone for a while, but Microsoft has been all about bringing its apps onto non-Windows Phone platforms lately, and today’s launch is part of that effort. It’s great to see Microsoft doing so, and this Office Lens app seems pretty great so far. It quickly recognized the document I was trying to photograph, and when I did snap a photo, it wasn’t long before the doc was reoriented and easily readable on my phone’s screen.
You can grab Office Lens for iOS and Android right now. iOS folk can get it from the App Store, but Android users have to go through a bit more effort by joining the Office Lens Android Preview community on Google+ and then click the Become a Tester link