Might sound funny or unreal but believe me, we now have some really interesting technology in our hands as of now. There are couple of applications out there in App stores that you can use to turn snapped documents into PDFs and so forth. But what is more daunting is having to recopy an Excel spreadsheet back from one place to the other manually. It’s as though hell is about to break loose.

But never mind that, You can just snap with your Android/iPhone camera and then convert whatever photograph you have snapped (Documents) into a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet in a few seconds. What you just need is the Microsoft Excel Application itself which can be done with the Excel’s Insert Data from Picture tool. This happens when you take pictures of data in rows and columns on a piece of paper, it gets auto-converted into an Excel spreadsheet…MAGIC!

How the process takes place is through some internet syncing whereby the Spreadsheet conversionntool sends the image to Excel’s online Image-Recognition engine which processes and converts the words and numbers into a table. One other interesting thing about this process is that the spreadsheet can be translated into dozens of languages. You even get to make corrections to whatsoever error you notice before the conversion takes place.

Excel for Android and iPhone is part of Microsoft’s collection of Office apps for mobile devices that includes Word and PowerPoint. The free versions of the mobile productivity apps give you basic editing tools. With a Microsoft Office subscription, you can unlock more features, such as the ability to collaborate with colleagues. These tools are few of the biggest Microsoft’s owned Utility software that had been around in more than a decade.

HOW DO YOU CONVERT A PAPER DOCUMENT INTO EXCEL SPREADSHEET?

STEP 1. First of all, head into the Excel app, tap the New button at the top of the app to create a new file. You can choose to create a blank workbook or use one of the templates that come with the app.

STEP 2. Then at the bottom of the app, tap the Data from Picture button (it’s the 3×3 grid with a camera). If this is your first time using the tool, tap Allow to give Microsoft permission to convert the image to data using Microsoft’s online service.

STEP 3. Now, Position the red rectangle around the data you want to capture, and then tap the round Capture button. The app is a little finicky about what it does and doesn’t identify as data, so it may take you a few tries to capture what you want.

STEP 4. If after couple of trials you are happy with the captured image, tap the red check button to convert the data. If you’re not happy, then just tap the X and to start all over again.

STEP 5. In a preview of the captured data, tap a red-highlighted cell and then tap Edit to enter missing information. Tap Done after each change. You can also tap unhighlighted cells to make corrections or changes.

STEP 6. Once you are happy with the data, tap Insert at the top to place the data in your workbook.

As you can see, the magic is quite smooth without any complexity whatsoever. The converted document can be words, numbers or even listings like recipes and so forth. And while the app was remarkably accurate converting data from a piece of paper, we also got it to collect data from a laptop screen.

It did struggle with our hand-written data, however. The Insert Data from Picture tool for Android and iOS can work with 21 languages, including French, German and Spanish, with more languages to come, Microsoft said.

As for privacy concerns, “The privacy and security of Microsoft’s customers’ data are of the utmost importance to the company,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. “Intelligence features within Office apps strictly respect the access rights given to a user, and will not expose information to anyone who has not been given access.” So you can approach with some caution.