Cloud Sync
Scan Documents to OneDrive
Turn your iPhone into a OneDrive scanner. Capture documents, save as PDF, upload directly to OneDrive personal or Microsoft 365 work accounts.
Turn your iPhone into a OneDrive scanner. Capture documents, save as PDF, upload directly to OneDrive personal or Microsoft 365 work accounts.
OneDrive is the cloud storage that comes with every Microsoft 365 subscription. If your work runs on Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams, your files are probably already in OneDrive or SharePoint. Scanning a receipt, contract, or form directly into the right OneDrive folder keeps everything in one place — and makes it instantly accessible from Word on desktop, Outlook mobile, Teams meetings, and the OneDrive web interface.
ScanLens connects to OneDrive using Microsoft's official authentication library (MSAL). You sign in on Microsoft's own login page, just like signing into any other Microsoft app. ScanLens never sees your Microsoft password, and your IT department's single sign-on and multi-factor authentication policies work exactly as they do with Microsoft's own apps.
Download ScanLens from the App Store and open it. No ScanLens account required.
Inside ScanLens, open Settings and tap Cloud Sync. You will see iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive as options.
Tap OneDrive. ScanLens opens Microsoft's official sign-in page in a secure web view. Sign in with your Microsoft account — personal (Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live) or work/school (Microsoft 365 / Office 365). Your organization's MFA, conditional access, and SSO policies apply exactly as with any other Microsoft app.
Microsoft shows you the permissions ScanLens is requesting — typically read and write access to your OneDrive files. Review and approve. If your organization requires admin consent for third-party apps, you will see a message asking your admin to approve; otherwise the connection completes right away.
Choose the OneDrive folder where scans should go. Common choices: Documents/Scans, Apps/ScanLens, or a dedicated subfolder like Documents/Receipts/2026.
Scan a document with the camera, review, and save. The PDF uploads to your chosen OneDrive folder. With auto-upload enabled (Premium), this happens automatically in the background.
Accounts ending in @outlook.com, @hotmail.com, @live.com, or a personal custom domain tied to Microsoft work the same as Google or Dropbox accounts — sign in, grant permission, done. You get the standard OneDrive storage tied to your account (5 GB free, or 1 TB with Microsoft 365 Personal).
Accounts from your company or school's Microsoft 365 tenant — typically something like [email protected] — also work, but there are a few extra things to be aware of:
Auto-upload queues every new scan for upload to your chosen OneDrive folder. Uploads happen in the background using iOS background transfer — the app does not need to be open. A WiFi-only option prevents cellular data usage.
Auto-upload to cloud storage is a Premium feature. Free tier users can manually share scans to OneDrive through the iOS share sheet — functional, but requires a tap every time.
One common workflow: scan a receipt during the day, ScanLens uploads it to OneDrive/Receipts/2026 automatically, and by evening it's already available to your laptop at the office or in your Excel expense tracker.
Microsoft OneDrive storage tiers as of 2026:
Verify current pricing at microsoft.com. The Microsoft 365 Personal subscription at about $69.99/year is usually the best value for individuals: 1 TB of OneDrive plus the desktop and mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
Large scans can use significant space. Compressing PDFs before upload typically reduces file size by 50–80%.
OneDrive is the default storage backend for Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365). This means scans uploaded to OneDrive appear natively in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint's "Open" dialogs without any extra configuration. Scan a signed contract with ScanLens, upload it to OneDrive, and open it directly from Word on your desktop or the Word mobile app — no downloading or re-uploading required.
For business users, SharePoint document libraries can be synced through the OneDrive desktop client. This means scans can flow directly into team document management workflows without manual uploads to a separate SharePoint interface. If your legal team maintains a SharePoint library for signed agreements, ScanLens can upload to the synced OneDrive folder, and the file appears in SharePoint automatically.
If your organization uses Microsoft Teams, OneDrive files are accessible from the Files tab in any Teams channel. Share a scanned document in a Teams conversation by linking to the OneDrive file — recipients get a live preview inline, and the file stays in one canonical location rather than being duplicated as an attachment. For organizations already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, this level of integration makes OneDrive the natural cloud sync destination for scanned documents.
OneDrive maintains version history for all files, including scanned PDFs. If a file is accidentally overwritten or modified — for example, if you re-scan a document and upload it with the same filename — you can restore any previous version from the last 30 days on personal accounts, or longer on Microsoft 365 business plans. This is a meaningful safety net for important scans like signed contracts, tax documents, or medical records.
Microsoft also offers a "Files Restore" feature that can roll back your entire OneDrive to any point in the last 30 days. This was designed as protection against ransomware — if malicious software encrypts your files, you can undo the damage by restoring your OneDrive to the state it was in before the attack. For long-term document archives, this makes OneDrive one of the more resilient cloud storage options available.
Combined with ScanLens's on-device OCR — which creates searchable, text-layer PDFs before upload — your scanned documents in OneDrive are both recoverable and searchable. Version history preserves the full scan quality at every point in time, so you never lose a document to accidental edits or overwrites.
When you connect OneDrive to ScanLens:
Yes. ScanLens integrates with Microsoft OneDrive for cloud upload. You can connect a personal Microsoft account (Outlook.com, Hotmail, or Live.com) or a work or school account (Microsoft 365 / OneDrive for Business). The integration uses Microsoft's standard OAuth 2.0, so ScanLens never sees your Microsoft password.
A personal Microsoft account includes 5 GB of free OneDrive storage. Microsoft 365 Personal adds 1 TB for approximately $69.99 per year, and Microsoft 365 Family provides 1 TB per user for up to 6 users for around $99.99 per year. OneDrive for Business plans typically include 1 TB or more per user. ScanLens uses your existing OneDrive quota and does not charge for storage.
Yes. ScanLens supports OneDrive for Business (included with Microsoft 365 subscriptions). Sign in with your work or school Microsoft account. If your organization restricts third-party app access, your Microsoft 365 tenant admin may need to approve ScanLens in the Microsoft Entra ID admin center before the connection will work.
Yes. Auto-upload to cloud storage is a Premium feature. Once enabled, newly scanned documents upload to your chosen OneDrive folder in the background. You can restrict uploads to WiFi only to avoid using cellular data — especially useful if your work account is tied to a phone plan with data limits.
Yes. ScanLens uses Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL) and OAuth 2.0, so you sign in on Microsoft's own login page and your password is never shared with ScanLens. Uploads travel over HTTPS directly to Microsoft's OneDrive servers. You can revoke ScanLens's access at any time from your Microsoft account security settings at account.microsoft.com, or for work accounts through My Apps.
Free to download. Auto-upload requires Premium (7-day free trial).