Your iPhone Is Not A Scanner Replacement
In unprecedented times, people are coming together to help with hacks and tips about all things work and learn from home and technology. Including scanner and scanning tips. Recently, on a school Facebook group we were offered this helpful hint:
Working from home? Here’s a great tip in case you need to scan a document. iPhone users: go to “notes” and hit the little camera button. It will ask if you want to scan a document. Lay out the pages you want to scan, and it will save them all as a PDF file! So easy and helpful if you depend on using a scanner like I do!
For one-off scanning without a scanner, this can absolutely be a lifesaver. I might use this for documenting digital learning, as our teachers are asking that we email copies of completed worksheets they send on Google classroom and print out. Creating PDFs from photos is a great way to make sure that your recipients are able to use what you’re sending no matter how they are storing it. It’s fast and you can send from the same device you took the picture on.
In business, we often are asked to scan significantly more volume than this, easily ten pages or more per document, and when we are balancing working from home, home schooling, maintaining the MESS that is created when all the members of your home are home ALL THE TIME, we’re looking for ways to save every second we can.
While great for one-off quick scans, if you are looking for a way that saves a few more minutes, won’t require renaming , merging or splitting, you might want to check out our last article to see if there is a better solution for your scanner and scanning needs. I grabbed my scanner from the office, loaded the drivers online and now don’t have to point, click, scan, point, shoot, edit, split, create new document name the new document, point, click scan. My 25-page set of documents to scan was scanned in no time, less than one minute.
What helpful hacks and hints are you finding that work great for some things, but not for everything? Do you keep looking? Or are you going with what’s “good enough?” I try not to be a “good enough” person. I’ll use this for the one-offs, but for business, I’m happy to rely on more efficient tools.
Stay safe and sane out there. Wash your hands .