Mobile apps: Adobe Scan and Microsoft 365/Lens (PDF and OCR)

Overview

Microsoft 365, Microsoft Lens, and Adobe Scan are free apps that feature OCR technology for text recognition, allow image capture and selection from your device, and converts them to PDFs on your device. It also offers PDF editing tools like cropping, color adjustment, and page management, with the option to save images as JPEGs, share via email in your OneDrive and more. Faculty and staff, you can edit PDFs in Acrobat and students can submit files using the Canvas student app.

Use Cases

  • Students: Quickly capture and digitize lecture notes, whiteboard diagrams, homework, textbook pages. Store these scans in OneNote or as PDFs to create a valuable study resource. Submit captured content to Canvas. Please note, Canvas does have a limit of 500 MB for media files. Download the Microsoft 365 app for ease of storing and sharing files.
  • Staff/Faculty: Seamlessly gather and manage contact details using the business card feature. Incorporate scanned documents into your project work flows and easily share them with colleagues.
  • Personal Use: Keep important documents safe by storing them digitally, scan your favorite recipes, or preserve cherished family memories by photographing old photos and letters.

Feature

Microsoft 365

ios/Android

Microsoft Lens

ios/Android and Chromebook

Adobe Scan

ios/Android

SVSU account

Yes, staff and registered students.

Yes, staff and registered students

No, cannot authenticate with an SVSU email address). SVSU only has licensing for Adobe Creative Cloud for staff.
Saves to OneDrive

Yes

Yes

No
Scans multiple documents Yes Yes Yes
Dictate Yes No No
OCR Detection Yes Yes Yes
Capture automatically No No Yes
Auto crop captures Yes Yes Yes
Filters, Crop, Drawing, and Text Yes Yes Yes
Save as PDF Yes Yes Yes
Save as image Yes Yes Yes
Includes Office Suite Yes, (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) No No
Immersive Reader Yes Yes No
Accessibility and Screen Reader support

Yes, Microsoft 365 mobile app allows you to zoom in, change to dark or high contrast, use color filters and more.

Yes, Microsoft Lens can read aloud text using Immersive Reader.

Yes. Can enable visual, audio, and gesture features.

Download Mobile app

 
Help Guides
SVSU ITS recommends using the Microsoft 365 mobile app, its the most versatile. 
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