The Microsoft 365 App Scanner Is Gone Again. Here's What Still Works

If you went looking for the Microsoft 365 app scanner on your Android phone in the last few weeks and couldn’t find it, you’re not imagining it. And if this feels familiar, that’s because it’s the second time this year.

On 20 August 2026, Kevin Duncan posted a question on Microsoft’s Q&A site titled “Where has the M365 Scanner gone again? August 2026.” His use case is a good summary of who this hurts:

I use the scanner app as a core function of my business on site doing surveys, take photo’s of the house and save all into one document to share.

And, a bit further down:

They removed the amazing office lens, added a watered down version into one drive and M365. At least M365 could handle photos from my phone and scanning documents. And now M365 have removed the app?

This post covers what happened and in what order, what still works today, and how to set things up so the next redesign doesn’t wreck your workflow. If you’re here for the Lens shutdown itself, I’ve already covered the replacement options and OneDrive’s scanner quirks in their own posts, so I won’t repeat them here.

If you’re on an iPhone, Textora covers what people are missing most. Scans save to Files in one tap, on the phone or in iCloud Drive, which is exactly what OneDrive won’t do. You get a searchable PDF, you can merge several scans and photos into one document the way Kevin does for site surveys, and you can export a real Word (.docx) file. Textora isn’t available on Android; for Android, the options Microsoft and Google offer are covered below.

The timeline, from Microsoft’s pages and users’ reports

The app has had several names this year. Users call it M365, Microsoft’s help pages now call it the Microsoft Copilot app, and it was previously the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. It’s the same app on your phone.

Two things stand out.

First, I couldn’t find any Microsoft announcement that the scanner was going away. Its page on the Copilot app changes lists Group Chat, Podcasts and Deep Research by name as retiring on 18 August. Scanning isn’t mentioned. The same page does warn that “some features may be temporarily unavailable, or you may experience functionality gaps while the latest version of Copilot is being rolled out”, which is as close as it gets.

Second, the documentation and the app disagree. Microsoft’s getting started page for the Android app still describes Scan text and Scan table under + and then Documents. The separate help page for the app’s Actions, which is where Scan to PDF used to be documented, now just redirects to Microsoft’s general Copilot help hub. If your copy of the app still shows the scan options, you probably haven’t got the update yet.

Who actually answered those threads

This matters, because the answers get quoted around as if Microsoft said them.

In the March thread (“Now where did the scan function go in M365 Copilot for Android?”), the top answer is labelled AI answer, with Microsoft’s own disclaimer that “AI-generated content may be incorrect.” It told the user that scanning “is still available” through the app’s Actions. Another user replied in August: “The AI info doesnt correlate with what the app is saying … major backward step”.

In the August thread there’s another AI answer, plus two replies from TaoLi, labelled Independent Advisor on the site, not Microsoft staff. One of them says:

At this time, Microsoft has retired Lens and removed some scanning capabilities from the Microsoft 365 app. There is no setting to restore the old scanner feature.

The earlier reply from the same advisor says Microsoft removed the scanner “because the old Microsoft Lens (Office Lens) app has been retired.” That’s the advisor’s explanation, not a Microsoft statement. I couldn’t find Microsoft saying it anywhere.

As of 16 September 2026, none of the answers in either thread come from anyone labelled as Microsoft staff.

What still works

OneDrive (Android and iPhone)

This is Microsoft’s official answer. The Lens retirement page says so in one line, and adds the catch in another:

OneDrive does not support saving scans locally on your device.

According to Microsoft’s help pages, OneDrive has Whiteboard, Document, Business Card and Photo modes, and it saves scans as PDFs. Multi-page scans top out at 10 pages on Android and 30 on iOS.

The hard part is finding the button. Shannon Murphy, who started the March thread, came back in late August with what finally worked for her:

So if you want to scan anything you have to choose “Files” then at the bottom the scan option will appear. It would be nice if they included that in any of the instructions available.

That matches an earlier Q&A thread I wrote about, where an advisor explained that the menu you start from decides whether you get a PDF or a JPEG. That post has the details.

Android: Google Drive

If you’re on Android and don’t specifically need your scans in OneDrive, the Google Drive scanner is already on most phones. Tap the camera button at the bottom right, capture, then crop, filter, clean or add pages. You pick .pdf or .jpg and choose the Drive folder. There’s also a “Drive scan” home screen widget, which takes care of the “where did the button go” problem.

It saves to Google Drive, so like OneDrive it’s cloud storage, not a local file.

What Kevin did

When Kevin Duncan got no fix, he moved to a third-party scanner:

I’ve had to go to Genius Scan now.

The Independent Advisor in the same thread called a separate scanner app “a practical workaround.”

iPhone: Notes and Files

iOS has a basic scanner built in. Apple’s support page covers both routes: in Notes, tap the Attachment button and then Scan Documents. In Files, tap More, then Scan Documents, choose a location and save. That location can be on the phone itself. There’s more in my iPhone scanning guide.

Where it stops: there’s no Word export, and nothing that turns what’s on the page into a contact, event or reminder.

iPhone: Textora

Textora is a scanner and text reader in one, so scanning is the app’s main job rather than a button inside something else.

• Save to Files in one tap. The scanned PDF goes straight to a folder on the phone or in iCloud Drive, with nothing to download back from a cloud account.
• Searchable PDF. The text sits under the scanned image, so you can search and copy it in most PDF readers.
• One document from several. Scan multiple pages in a batch, import photos from your library or PDFs from Files, then merge, rotate or delete pages on the phone. You can also sign a PDF.
• Word, TXT and Markdown export for when you need to edit what you scanned.
• Text recognition runs on the phone, so the image isn’t uploaded to read it. No sign-up is needed to start scanning.

How to stop depending on an app that keeps moving the button

The lesson here isn’t “Microsoft bad.” It’s that the Microsoft 365 app scanner was a side feature inside an app whose main job changed. Lens’s job was handed to OneDrive and the Microsoft 365 app, that app moved to what Microsoft calls “an AI-first experience”, and the scanner didn’t survive the move. Features on the edge of a product’s purpose are the first to go when that purpose shifts.

A few habits that make the next change cheap:

Use a scanner whose main job is scanning. A dedicated scanner app, or the basic one in Notes and Files, is much less likely to vanish in a redesign than a button three menus deep in a chat app.

Keep the output boring. PDFs in a folder you choose, named by date. A PDF made by one app opens in all of them, so switching scanners later costs you nothing.

Don’t let the app be the archive. Microsoft’s Copilot changes page says files shared through the standalone Copilot app are moved to OneDrive. Fine, but check where your old scans actually ended up before assuming they’re safe.

Test after big updates. If scanning is part of how you get paid, like Kevin’s site surveys, do a test scan the day a major app update lands, not the morning of a job.

Send the feedback anyway. The Independent Advisor suggested using Help & Feedback inside the Microsoft 365 or OneDrive app. It won’t fix today’s problem, but more than 30 people have marked the March thread as “Same question”. In mid-September one reply asked Microsoft to “make a stand alone Microsoft scan App”.

Where Textora fits

Kevin’s workflow, on an iPhone. Scan the paperwork, pull in the photos of the house from your library, merge them into one PDF and save it to Files or share it. Scanning, merging and saving happen on the phone, and none of it depends on a menu in a chat app.

Getting the text out. If what you used the Microsoft 365 app scanner for was pulling text off paper into an email, a note or a translation, that’s Textora’s other half. It keeps a searchable history of everything you scan, reads text aloud, translates into about 30 languages, and can add a business card to Contacts or dates from a document to Calendar and Reminders.

It runs on iPhone and iPad with iOS 16 or later, and it’s free to download. Get Textora on the App Store.

I build Textora. User quotes are verbatim from the linked Microsoft Q&A threads, and facts about Microsoft’s and Google’s products are taken from their own pages, checked on 16 September 2026; I couldn’t confirm whether the scanner is also gone from the iPhone version of the Microsoft app. Email support@textora.app if something has changed.

Sources: Microsoft Q&A: “Where has the M365 Scanner gone again? August 2026.” · Microsoft Q&A: “Now where did the scan function go in M365 Copilot for Android?” · Microsoft: Updates to Copilot and the Microsoft Copilot app · Microsoft: Understand changes to Microsoft Copilot mobile app · Microsoft: Get started with the Microsoft Copilot app for Android · Microsoft: Retirement of Microsoft Lens · Microsoft: Scan in OneDrive for Android · Microsoft: Scan in OneDrive for iOS · Windows Central: Microsoft begins unified Copilot app rollout, 13 August 2026 · Google Drive Help: Scan documents with Google Drive (Android) · Apple Support: How to scan documents on your iPhone or iPad