iCreate - UK (2020-02)

Notes

Step-by-step Scandocumentswithan iPhone

Insert scans in Notes

and search with OCR

P

eople were talking about the

paperless office 20 years ago, but

it never really happened and we

are still buried under a mountain of paper

documents. However, it is useful to scan

them into your Mac because then they are

available on your computer, phone and

tablet. Even better, you can search for text

within scanned documents and this seems

to be a trick that was introduced with the

latest versions of macOS and iOS.

Documents can be scanned and inserted

into notes in the Notes app on the iPhone,

but here we look at Notes on the Mac.

This enables you to use the iPhone as a

scanner and it is a great way to turn paper

documents into digital ones that can be

stored on the computer and in iCloud.

Use an iPhone to scan documents into Notes and search for

text within documents using OCR on the Mac

You can use your iOS device as a scanner to

make paper documents digital on Mac

4

Crop to fit

Choose manual scanning mode and

options become available, such as selecting

the scanned area by dragging the corners to

crop it. Then keep the scan or retake it.

5

Save and view

Just keep putting documents under the

iPhone and scan them one by one, then tap

‘Save’. The scans appear in the note in the

Notes app on the Mac.

6

View a scan

Double-click a scanned document in a

note and it opens in a new window. Drag the

corners to resize it and use the zoom buttons

in the top-left corner to zoom in or out.

1

Create a note

Create a note in the Notes app or open an

existing note. Either go to the File menu and

select Insert From iPhone>Scan Documents,

or Ctrl+click in the note and select it.

2

Switch to iPhone

A message appears on the screen telling

you to scan a document with your iPhone. Pick

up your iPhone and it is automatically turned

on and the camera appears for scanning.

3

Manual vs auto

The iPhone scans automatically when a

document is detected in the camera view. A

contrasting background helps. Tap ‘Auto’ in the

top-right corner if you prefer manual mode.

10

Developer Time needed

Apple, Inc

Difficulty