Unnecessary retirement of Microsoft Office Lens

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Microsoft disabled Microsoft Lens on 2026/03/09 which forced users to use OneDrive to create digital versions of written documents. Office Lens supported the local storage of these documents whereas OneDrive does not.

Background

Microsoft Lens (formally known as Office Lens) is a piece of software within Microsoft Office 365 which allows users to create digital copies of written documents using the camera on a smart device. These documents can then be saved to either Microsoft's OneDrive or to the local storage on the users device. It is important to note that users are required to be signed in to a Microsoft Account with a valid Office 365 subscription in order to use Office Lens.

Retirement of Microsoft Lens

In August 2025, Microsoft announced that they would be retiring Microsoft Lens on 2025-09-15. This was then moved back to 2026-02-09 when Microsoft Lens was removed from the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store and after 2026-03-09, Microsoft Lens was completely disabled on the devices that still had it installed. However, it was still possible to access locally saved documents as long as the user had a Microsoft account with a valid Office 365 subscription.

Microsoft's Solution

Instead of using Microsoft Lens, Microsoft recommended that users use the built-in scanning feature on OneDrive. However it is important to note that this feature does not support storing the files locally.