Document scanning has become a need for most people nowadays. In an office, you often need to send a file to a person through the internet but if you take a picture of it using your regular camera or the mobile phone, the file will not be clear and the format also will not be in pdf which is a most common format used in transferring documents.
But because of this pandemic, the scanning not only remains limited to office work but is now being used for academic purposes as well. Because of the online studies, you might need to send your handwritten assignments in the form of a pdf to your concerned teacher. Hence, everyone in today’s world must be able to scan a document in the fastest way available.
We have brought this complete guide for scanning a document for you. If you want to know how to scan a document using an android, iPhone, mac, or windows laptop/desktop. The method for every device will be explained in this guide. Continue reading to know what’s inside it.

Every device has its own way of doing something. We have divided this article into three simple yet effective methods just for your ease. The first one is for those people who want to scan a document using a windows laptop/desktop, the second one for mac users, and the last but not the least is for cell phone users.
Contents
Method 1: Scan a document on windows
This method is for those people who are looking for how to scan a document in windows 10 or any other windows but before scanning a document on windows, you should know that in order to scan a document on windows you need to attach a scanner to your computer. You can also connect only the scanner but some of the best printers come with a built-in scanner this will enable you to scan a document from printer to computer. It’s up to your choice.
Follow the given steps.
- Place the document face-down in your scanner.
- Open the start menu by clicking the windows icon from the bottom-left corner.
- Type ‘windows fax and scan’ it will search for Windows Fax and Scan app.
- Open the “Windows Fax and Scan” app by clicking on it.
- Find and click on the ‘New Scan’ option. It will be somewhere in the upper left corner.
- The correct scanner must be selected. Clicking on ‘New Scan’ will open a window. This is the most important step, check whether the scanner name that is being shown is of your scanner. If it is not correct then change it to the correct one.
- Choose the right document type. Open the drop-down menu of ‘Profile’ to select the document type. ‘photo’ is the default.
- Select the color of the document. Open the drop-down menu of color format and select the color of your document color or black and white. There might be more options in your scanner.
- Decide the file type. Open the drop-down menu of ‘File-type’ and select the file type (e.g., jpeg or pdf)
- Preview your document. Before scanning you should know what how will your scanned document will look like. You do it by clicking Preview.
- Finally, click scan to scan the document.
- Location of scanned file can be located from File Explorer>Documents>Scanned Documents.
Read Also: Top 5 Best Printers For Flyers
Method 2: Scanning on MAC
This method is for the users of Apple Macintosh commonly known as Mac. Again, just like the windows method, you need to attach a scanner or printer-cum-scanner with your Mac in order to scan the documents on Mac. The following steps will help to learn how to scan a document on a mac.
- Place the document face-down in your scanner.
- Click on the Apple menu from the upper left corner.
- Click “system preferences” from the drop-down menu.
- Tap on ‘Printers and Scanners’ from the preferences menu.
- Select the right scanner or printer. If the selected scanner is not the correct one, change it.
- Click ‘Scan’ on the top of the window.
- ‘Open Scanner’ by clicking on it.
- Click on ‘Show Details’ from the lower right side.
- Choose the document format from the ‘Format’ drop-down menu. (jpeg for photos and pdf for documents).
- Choose the required color from the ‘kind’ drop-down menu. (black and white or color)
- Select the storage location from the ‘scan to’ drop-down menu.
- At last, click ‘scan’ to start scanning the document, it will be saved in your selected location.
Read Also: Best Printer for College Students
Method 3: Scan a document with a phone
The people, who are looking for how to scan a document with the phone, will find this method very useful as it is especially included for mobile users. This method works on both kinds of devices whether it be an android or an iPhone. Although there are so many scanning apps available there to scan documents. But the most preferred and easy-to-use app is the CamScanner. Hence, we will discuss the CamScanner.
- Download the CamScanner app from the Play Store. iOS users can search for this app on AppStore & download it.
- Open the CamScanner app once it is installed.
- Tap the ‘Camera with a +’ icon to start scanning the documents.
- It will open the camera. Calibrate the camera on the document.
- Once it is in the right place, start capturing the photos of the documents.
- If you want to scan a single file then select the ‘Single’ option. If you want to scan many documents then select the ‘Batch’ option.
- After capturing photos, crop them according to your need.
- Once, you are done with cropping select the filter. (Magic Color is the most preferred)
- Then save the document in your desired format.
- You can find the scanned documents where you saved them.
The free version of CamScanner has a watermark on the bottom right side of the documents. If you want to remove it then you will have to buy the app. Although the watermark does not cover any content of the document.