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Turn your phone into a PDF scanner

2 min read

16 Apr 2025

Organise everything with Dropbox

Know exactly where your work receipts are at all times. Instantly find whiteboard brainstorming pics when you need them. And never lose another important business card in a coat pocket.

When you use your phone as a PDF scanner, it’s easy to capture and upload important images and files to your Dropbox account. From there, Dropbox gives you smart naming and folder suggestions based on recent scans so you can organise your files intuitively.

Find files quickly

Dropbox uses automatic optical character recognition (OCR) technology, also known as text recognition, as part of our scanning software so you can easily search for the content later. Just input a term or keyword in the search bar and a shortlist of relevant content will appear. 

You can also search for content using a thumbnail preview, making it a snap for you to find and organise all your searchable PDF files within Dropbox.

Create legible and manageable PDFs

Scanned documents can easily become PDF documents with various filters in black and white, whiteboard or original. Your scans are auto-detected, so you can smart crop and rotate them, too. 

Turn PDF format files into multiple-page documents simply by adding additional pages and reordering them as you see fit. And you can always retake a scan without having to start again. 

When you’re done, choose where in Dropbox you want to save your scans with smart naming and smart folder suggestions.

Edit PDFs online with Dropbox

Add, remove, rotate and rearrange pages in PDF files. You can even add and edit text—all with a Dropbox account.

Turn physical documents into digital collaborative tools

Free yourself from relying on physical folders and paper documents in the office. Instead, transform your team into an organised, collaborative powerhouse with paperless, workable files that everyone can access in one place. 

Your teams can quickly scan documents to create PDFs to store and back up all their important work in Dropbox while enjoying greater mobility and the freedom to work from anywhere.

Put the power of doc scanning in your pocket

Follow these simple instructions to use the document scanner in the Dropbox mobile app (available on iOS and Android phones and tablets) to scan files directly to your Dropbox account or convert existing files to scans: 

  1. Open the Dropbox app on your mobile device.
  2. Tap the + (plus) icon.
  3. Tap Scan Document.
  4. Either take a picture of the content you’d like to scan or select an existing image on your mobile device.
  5. If desired, make edits or scan additional pages.
  6. Tap Next.
  7. If desired, make adjustments to the save settings.
  8. Tap Save.

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