Office Lens for Windows Phone Can Now Create Office Documents

Microsoft on Tuesday released an update to its excellent Office Lens app for Windows Phone, enabling the app to convert scanned pictures into Word documents and PowerPoint presentations that you can edit, author and edit again.

As you might know, Office Lens for Windows Phone first shipped in the spring, providing the ability to use your handset's camera like a scanner and store photos, whiteboard drawings and documents to OneNote. The app was then updated in August with improved document scans and the ability to customize where scans are stored in OneNote.

This week's update makes this amazing app even better. It adds the following features:

Convert a scanned document into a Word document. You can now save a scanned document as a Word document in OneDrive. From there, you can edit it as you would any Word document.

Convert a whiteboard drawing into a PowerPoint presentation. You can now save a scanned whiteboard drawing as a PowerPoint presentation in OneDrive. From there, you can edit it as you would any PPT presentation.

To be clear, these are real Office documents, not drawings or pictures embedded in an Office document. For a Word document, all of the text, formatting and layout is preserved and images of typed text become fully editable. For PowerPoint, all the handwritten lines and strokes are transformed into PowerPoint drawing objects that can be recolored, resized, repositioned and edited, Microsoft says.

Amazing.

You can download Office Lens for Windows Phone 8+ from the Windows Phone Store.