72 ANDROID ADVISOR • ISSUE 72
icon to save it as a Word file,
the Office Lens app uses OCR
scanning and converts it to
text, and rather well.
From the home screen
within the Office app, you
can click the ‘action’ button
near the bottom of the screen
to enable a few more nifty
options, including extracting
text from a new (or saved)
picture. You can create PDF
files from photos, and even
apply signatures.
As a parent, I can see the
value of this solution: you can
use the mobile Office app to
take a photo of a permission slip (even those with
more than one page) and save it as a PDF. The Office
app allows you to sign them, though you’ll need to
scrawl your signature on the screen, then add it to the
document. It shouldn’t take you too long to figure out.
What’s coming in the future
As someone who chats to Cortana frequently from
my home office, the ability to dictate text via the
The Office Lens output isn’t
bad, although some of the
formatting ended up jumbled
