How to Scan Documents on Your Samsung Galaxy Phone

How to use the built-in camera app as a document scanner on a Samsung phone.

Most modern smartphones can easily take high-resolution photos. Because of this, you can capture text and images on physical documents such as certificates, receipts, utility bills and ID cards, and even reprint them without significant loss of quality.

You need to install a third party scanning app to scan, edit and share these paper documents on most phones. But if you own a modern Samsung smartphone, you can do without these apps. With Samsung’s native camera and built-in Microsoft Office app, you can easily scan paper documents.

How to scan documents with Samsung’s camera app

If you own a Samsung Galaxy phone, you can easily scan individual pages of your important documents and share them instantly. Open your camera app and follow these steps:

1. Lay your paper out on a flat and stable surface—preferably one that contrasts the color of your paper.
2. Focus your camera on the document as you would if you were taking a picture of another object.
3. The camera recognizes the paper, highlights the edges and prompts you to scan.
4. Tap the yellow scan prompt and drag the corner points of the captured image to adjust the scan area accordingly.
5. Beat Save on computer and access the scanned document in your photo gallery.

How to scan multiple pages using Microsoft Office app on Samsung

If your Samsung Galaxy comes preinstalled with Microsoft Office, you can use it for advanced scanning options. With Microsoft Office, you can scan multiple documents or pages and combine them into one PDF file. Follow these steps:

1. Lay out your paper on a flat and stable surface
2. Open Microsoft Office and tap the Actions tab at bottom right.
3. Beat Scan to PDF to start the camera scan tool.
4. You should see highlights around your document.
5. Tap the capture button, adjust the corner points to make the scan as accurate as possible, and tap Confirm.
6. Beat Add to bottom left to scan another page and repeat the above steps. You can add as many pages as you like.
7. Tap the Finished bottom right after scanning the last page.
8. Your multi-page PDF document can be shared and edited in Microsoft Office.

If your phone doesn’t come with Microsoft preinstalled, you can download it from the Samsung Galaxy Store. You can also try one of these free mobile scanner apps.

Be more productive with your Samsung Galaxy

You don’t need to invest in a home office scanner if you have a Samsung Galaxy phone. Thanks to the high-resolution cameras on modern Galaxy devices, scanning has never been easier.

If you want to save or share a simple image scan, the native camera’s scan tool should do the trick. For advanced and multi-page scanning options, the built-in Microsoft Office app on Galaxy devices should suffice.