How to Scan a Document Without a Scanner

To scan a document without a scanner, use the scanning function built into your phone: it photographs each page, crops it to the paper and saves the set as one PDF. If the phone is not an option, a camera, an office copier with scan-to-email, a print shop or a public library can each produce a usable file.

Which of those is right depends on the paper in front of you: how many pages, whether they are bound, and whether they can leave the room. This post is the overview for the phone scanning posts on this blog, and it points to the detailed ones as it goes.

Can you scan a document without a scanner?

Yes. A scanner is one way to make a picture of a page, and any device that makes a sharp, flat, evenly lit picture of the whole page can stand in for it. A phone can do it for ordinary office paper, provided you take a little care at capture.

What the scanner contributes is control. The page lies flat against glass or runs through a feeder, the light is built in, and the distance never changes. Without the machine, you supply those three things yourself: a flat page, even light and a steady, square view.

What counts as a usable scan

Set the bar by what the file has to do, not by how it was made. A usable scan:

• shows the entire page, margins and edges included,
• is sharp enough to read the smallest print on it,
• has every page of the document, once each, in order,
• is one file per document, and
• has a name that says what it is.

A phone capture that meets those five points is a scan for working purposes. A flatbed scan that misses one of them is not.

When "usable" is decided by someone else

A court, an agency or the other side may have its own requirements for a filed or produced document: a file type, a size limit, a resolution, text that can be searched. Those rules differ from one court and one agreement to the next. Read the rule or the instruction that applies to your document before you decide a phone capture will do.

Five ways to scan paper when no scanner is in the room

The five are a phone's scanning app, a camera, an office copier, a print shop and a public library. The first two are in your pocket or bag. The other three are machines that belong to someone else, which changes who else might see the document.

1. A phone's scanning app

This is the default. On an iPhone, Apple's article on scanning documents on an iPhone or iPad describes Scan Documents commands in the Notes and Files apps; the post on how to scan a document on iPhone goes through both. On Android, Google documents scanning in the Drive app and in Files by Google on its help pages; the post on how to scan a document on Android covers those and the Samsung camera.

What makes these scanning functions different from the camera is what happens after the shutter: the app finds the page's edges, squares the page up, and collects the pages into one file.

2. A camera

A plain photograph of each page is the fallback when there is no scanning function to hand, or when you are working with a standalone camera. You get separate image files, and the cropping, ordering and combining are left to you. The guide to how to OCR a photo of a document explains how to take the picture, and the post on photographing documents with a digital camera covers the standalone camera.

3. An office copier

A multifunction copier is a scanner by another name, so an office with "no scanner" may still have one in the hallway. Look on its panel for a Scan, Send or Email function. If you are a visitor, at a client's office or opposing counsel's, ask before you use it and ask where the scan will be sent from.

4. A print shop

Shops that sell printing and copying may also sell scanning, by the page or by the job. Call first and ask three things: whether they scan to PDF, how the file is delivered, and whether the scan passes through or is kept on their systems.

5. A library

A public library may have a scanning station or a copier that scans. Ask at the desk what it costs, how the file is delivered and whether the station keeps copies. Bring a USB drive in case email is not offered.

Before you hand paper to a shared machine

For routes three to five, the document passes through equipment you do not control, and an emailed scan passes through a mail system as well. Whether that is acceptable for a client's document is a judgment about confidentiality that you and your firm make. Schema Law cannot make it for you, and a phone in your own hand avoids the question.

Which no-scanner route suits one page, a stack or a bound file?

For one page or a few, use the phone. For a thick stack of loose sheets, look for a copier with a document feeder. For anything bound, stapled or fragile that must stay intact, use the phone or a camera, because a feeder needs loose sheets.

Where the stack tips over

There is no fixed page count at which a phone stops making sense. The limit is your attention. Each phone page is a separate act of framing, holding still and checking, and the chance of a skipped or doubled page grows with the pile. Try this: scan ten pages with the phone, time it, and check the result against the paper. Multiply by the size of the stack. If the answer is an hour of standing over a table, find a feeder.

The post on phone scan vs scanner takes the comparison further and says which pages are worth a trip to the real machine.

Bound originals

Do not remove a staple, a rivet or a binding from an original unless you are sure you are allowed to. A stapled original affidavit, a bound corporate minute book and a court file on loan are all things to photograph as they are. Open the document as flat as it will go, hold the facing page down outside the text, and capture one page at a time.

Odd sizes

Legal-size paper, a folded survey and a long receipt each need something different. The post on how to scan a large document with a phone covers oversized sheets.

What a phone gives you that a copier's scan-to-email does not

A phone gives you the picture in your own hand, checked on the spot, with no one else's settings or mail server in between. A copier's scan-to-email gives you speed on a stack and a mechanically steady page. The trade is control against throughput.

What the phone does better

• You see each page as you capture it. A cropped margin or a blurred line shows up while the paper is still there.
• It goes where the paper is. A records room, a client's home, a hallway outside a courtroom.
• It handles what a feeder cannot. Bound, stapled, fragile, thick, odd-sized.
• It captures in color unless you pick a filter. A blue-ink signature, a red stamp and a highlighter mark stay distinguishable.
• Nobody else's address book is involved. The file is on your phone, and you decide where it goes.

What the copier does better

• Volume. Fifty loose pages go through a feeder while you watch.
• Consistency. Every page is flat, lit the same and at the same scale.
• Two sides. A copier with two-sided scanning captures fronts and backs in one pass.
• No hands in the frame. Nothing but the page is in the picture.

What to check on a copier you do not know

A shared copier may still hold the last user's choices. Before you press start, look at the panel for:

1. Color mode. A black-and-white setting can drop faint ink, pencil and colored stamps. Pick color or grayscale if the page has any.
2. Resolution. If the panel shows a figure, note it. The post on the best DPI for OCR explains what the number means.
3. Two-sided. Off when your originals are one-sided, or you will get a blank after every page. On when they are two-sided, or you will lose half the document.
4. File type. One PDF for the whole stack, not one file per page.
5. Destination. Read the email address on the screen before sending. A typed address with one wrong letter sends a client's document to a stranger.
6. Size. A mail system may reject a large attachment. If nothing arrives, the scan may have been too big to send; split the stack and try again.

Then open the PDF that arrives and count its pages against the paper before you leave the machine.

A worked example

Priya, a solo practitioner, is at a client's small business to review records before a deadline. The client produces a 60-page loose printout of invoices and a bound, signed operating agreement. The office has a copier with a feeder. Priya asks to use it, sets it to color and to one PDF, checks that the destination is her own address, and runs the invoices. She counts 60 pages in the file that arrives. The operating agreement stays bound: she scans it with her phone at the client's desk, 22 pages, checking the signature page and the notary block at full zoom. Two routes, each used for what it suits, and both files checked before she leaves.

Save each photograph of that bound agreement at full size and in order before you extract text. A complete image set is what you compare if the agreement later stands as documentary evidence. A line in the file note about who shot it supports authentication and the chain of custody.

Is a scan made without a scanner good enough to run through OCR?

It can be. Recognition software reads the picture, not the device that made it. What it needs is enough pixels across each letter, sharp focus, even light and a page that is square to the frame. A phone capture that has those gives the software what it needs; one that lacks them does not, whatever made it.

What recognition needs from the picture

The post on how many megapixels you need to scan a document works through pixel counts, and the post on how to send photos without losing quality covers the last row.

A check you can do in one minute

Before you leave the paper, zoom in on the smallest text on the page: a footnote, a form number, the fine print under a signature line. If you can read it comfortably on the phone's screen at full zoom, the software has something to work with. If you are guessing at letters, so will it. Retake the page.

Does the capture already contain text?

Some phone scanning functions save a PDF that their makers describe as searchable. Google uses that word on its help pages for scanning with Google Drive and scanning with Files by Google. Do not assume it of any file until you have tested it by searching and selecting in the software your office uses. The post on free OCR scanner apps covers whether a phone scan carries text and how far to trust it.

Capture faults that recognition cannot repair

Software can straighten and sharpen a picture to a degree. It cannot recover what the picture never held: a line hidden under glare, a margin outside the frame, letters smeared by movement. Fix those at capture.

From a no-scanner capture to text in the matter file

Once you have the capture, five things remain: get it off the device, make it one file per document, name it, convert it to text if you need text, and check that text against the page. Then remove the copies you no longer need.

1. Move it to firm storage. Email it to yourself, save it to the firm's cloud folder, or transfer it by cable. A file that exists only on a phone or in a copier's sent mail is not in the matter file.
2. Make one file per document. A phone scanning app does this for you. Loose photographs need combining in page order; the post on how to scan 2 documents into 1 PDF covers page order on the phone.
3. Name it. Client or matter, what the document is, its date, and "scan" or "photo" if your office tracks how copies were made.
4. Decide whether you need text. A scan you will only look at can stay as it is. A scan you will search, quote or edit needs recognition.
5. Convert. Schema Law reads a PDF, PNG or JPEG of up to 20 MB into text and tables: you sign in with Google, upload the file in the browser, view the parsed pages and export. The free plan takes one document a day of up to three pages, and every plan exports all eight formats, Word, Excel and searchable PDF among them; the pricing page has the limits for longer documents.
6. Check the text. Recognition is strongest on clean print, and nothing marks a passage as uncertain. Read names, dates and amounts against the picture. The post on why OCR output is full of errors gives a method.
7. Clear up. Delete the capture from the phone, the sent folder and any shared machine you can reach, once the file is safely stored. The post on how to delete scanned documents from phone storage and backups lists where copies remain.

Keep a note of how the copy was made

Add a line to the file note: who captured the document, when, where, with what, and whether the original went back to the client or stayed with you. If a question about the copy comes up later, that line answers it in seconds. Whether a phone capture can stand in for an original or a certified copy is a legal question that depends on the rule and the court; this post is only about making the file.

What to keep

Keep the capture as it came off the device, alongside anything you make from it. A converted Word file is a working copy. The picture of the page is the closest thing in the file to the paper, and it is what you go back to when a number looks wrong.