Microsoft Lens alternative: what to use instead of Office Lens

1. Save your old scans. If Lens is still installed, you can still see your earlier scans while signed in to the last account you used. Save what you want to keep as a PDF or image.
2. Create an account and connect Microsoft. Create an Axsuro account and connect your Outlook calendar and Microsoft To Do in Settings. Both sync in both directions.
3. Upload old PDFs. Upload saved scans as PDFs, up to 50 pages per file. Each PDF page becomes a page in your notebook and is read.
4. Photograph new pages. From now on, photograph notes, whiteboards and flipcharts with the Axsuro app, several pages in a row if you like.
5. Confirm. Tasks and events Axsuro found wait for "Confirm". After that they are in Microsoft To Do and your Outlook calendar.

Microsoft Lens, formerly Office Lens, was for years the default way to capture documents, whiteboards and business cards with a phone. In August 2025 Microsoft announced its end. At first the Microsoft 365 Copilot app was to take over scanning, and Lens was due to leave the stores in November 2025.

In January 2026 Microsoft revised the plan. As of October 2026, according to Microsoft:

• Lens was retired in phases from 9 January 2026.
• On 9 February 2026 the app was removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play.
• New scans were possible until 9 March 2026, and not after that.
• You can still see earlier scans while the app stays installed and you are signed in to the last account you used.
• As a replacement, Microsoft recommends the scan feature in the OneDrive app (the plus button, then "Scan").

Even in the first announcement Microsoft said some Lens features would be missing from the Copilot scanner: saving straight to OneNote, Word or PowerPoint, business cards to OneNote, and Immersive Reader. If those were your routes, you need a new setup.

The right alternative depends on what you used Lens for. A PDF of a contract needs something different from a page of meeting notes.

• OneDrive app: Microsoft's official successor. Scans are saved as files in your OneDrive; Microsoft says saving them only on the device isn't supported.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot app: also has a scanner and was Microsoft's first recommendation. A good fit if you work in Microsoft 365 anyway.
• Adobe Scan: Adobe's free scanner app, which turns photos into PDFs with text recognition for printed text.
• Google Drive: the Drive app on Android and iPhone has a built-in scanner; scans are saved as PDFs in Drive.
• iPhone and iPad: "Scan Documents" is built into the Notes and Files apps, no extra app needed. Live Text lets you copy text from the image, including clear handwriting.
• Axsuro: not a scanner app as such. The photo is only the first step; Axsuro then reads every line and turns it into tasks, events, documents and sketches.

Plenty of people never used Lens for receipts. They used it for the notepad after a meeting or the whiteboard after a workshop. The photo went to OneNote and mostly stayed there. This is where Axsuro comes in.

You photograph the page, and Axsuro reads every line word for word, with the date and page number. It reads photos of whiteboards and flipcharts like a page, sticky notes and boxes included. PDFs work too, up to 50 pages per file, so your old Lens scans can come along. Whole old notebooks come in at once with "Bring in an old notebook": Axsuro guesses the date of each page, makes nothing you need to confirm and doesn't count them against the pages of the month.

A word at the start of a line tells Axsuro what the line is. A page from a weekly meeting might look like this:

• meeting: Weekly sync @Lena @Tom
• dec: We're doing the Hamburg trade fair
• todo: Send quote to Mark Fri
• cal: Thu 10:00 Stand planning @Lena

That becomes a meeting with attendees and a decision, a task due on Friday and an event on Thursday. Once you tap "Confirm", the task is in Microsoft To Do and the event in your Outlook calendar, synced both ways. All markers are listed under how markers work. A line without a marker stays a thought and is still searchable.

Later you find everything again with search, or by using Ask: "What did we decide about the trade fair?" The answer comes only from your pages, with a link to the page.

To be honest, for many Lens jobs Axsuro is not the right tool.

• Receipts, contracts, forms: if you want a tidy PDF to file or send, use OneDrive, Adobe Scan, Google Drive or the iPhone scanner. Axsuro crops the page but does not straighten its perspective.
• Business cards: Axsuro does not read business cards into your contacts.
• Everything in Microsoft 365: if your files belong in OneDrive and SharePoint, the OneDrive scanner is the shortest route. Axsuro has no export to OneNote.
• Scanning now and then: if you scan a few times a year, you don't need another app. Notes and Files on the iPhone already do it.

• You write by hand in meetings and want tasks and events to actually reach To Do and Outlook without retyping. See meeting notes.
• You photograph whiteboards and flipcharts and want to search them later. Teams can see on Axsuro Business how photos land in a shared notebook.
• You draw sketches and want to edit them. "Keep sketch" makes every line editable, with export to PNG, PDF or SVG.
• You write long text by hand. "Save as document" turns it into a typed document, word for word.

Axsuro runs in the browser and as an app for iPhone and Android. Your pages are stored in Frankfurt and read in the EU. Every new account starts with 14 days of Pro without a card, and there is a free plan after that. See pricing for details.

• Apps for handwritten notes in 2026, compared
  Apps for handwritten notes in 2026: Axsuro, Goodnotes, Notability, Rocketbook, Pen to Print, xNote, Penlo, OneNote and more, sorted by what they do.
• How to digitise handwritten notes and keep writing on paper
  How to digitise handwritten notes and whole notebooks, old pages and PDFs included. Then search, ask, organise and export everything you wrote.
• Turn handwritten meeting notes into tasks
  Digitise meeting notes from paper: meeting:, todo: and dec: turn a handwritten page into a meeting with tasks, decisions and a summary for everyone.