With so many people now working from home, few of us have access to office equipment like printers and scanners. Scanning documents from home, or outside the office, should be easy. Microsoft OneDrive has long offered a free scanning feature from the OneDrive mobile app which lets you scan and digitize single documents, receipts and more. Up until now, scanning multiple pages and saving them as single document was a premium feature that required a Microsoft 365 subscription. Today we’re making multi-page scanning available for everyone using a OneDrive personal account.
What is OneDrive scanning?
With the OneDrive mobile app you can scan physical documents, business cards and whiteboards simply by opening the app and touching the camera icon. Once scanned, OneDrive digitizes the image into a PDF file, which you can then save, share or mark-up with text, pictures, or freehand drawing and writing. Once you scan items into OneDrive, you’ll be able to access them anywhere from any device.
8 tips for scanning with the OneDrive app
The OneDrive scanning feature can help keep you organized, simplify tasks, and keep your digital files secured in one place. Here’s a list of some of the many ways you can use the OneDrive app to scan:
- Scan old photographs and share them with friends and family.
- Scan handwritten schoolwork and submit it online or by email.
- Scan, sign and send a document. Here’s how: First scan the document, then touch the pencil icon and sign it with your finger. Save the document and share it right from the OneDrive app.
- Scan a drawing or your child’s artwork and then share it with family.
- Keep digital copies of your receipts and save them to a “receipts” folder.
- Capture whiteboard notes.
- Scan that pile of business cards in your desk draw.
- Keep important documents secured with Personal Vault. You can scan sensitive documents (like tax filings or copies of your passport, driver’s license, and insurance card) directly into OneDrive Personal Vault. These files will be protected behind an extra layer of identity verification.1
What you’ll need to use multi-page scan
Multi-page scan is now available to everyone, everywhere OneDrive is available. You'll need a OneDrive account and the latest version of the OneDrive app on Android (6.5 or higher), or iOS (11.31.5 or higher). The maximum number of pages or images that you can multi-page scan is 10.
1) A Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription is required to store more than 3 files in Personal Vault.
