PDF, short for Portable Document Format, are a commonly used file. If you have a paper copy of a document that you want to turn into a digital PDF file you can use your Android or iPhone to capture the document and convert it to PDF.

How to Create PDFs on Android Using Google Drive

Open the Google Drive app on your phone.

In the bottom right corner tap the camera icon.

Hold your phone over the paper document and if you have “auto capture” turned on the camera will automatically take a picture of the document, you can also choose the manual option to capture the image yourself. Once the image has been captured you can add additional pages by tapping the (+) icon then tap the done button and then the save button.

You can access the files by tapping the files icon at the bottom of the screen.

How to create PDFs on iPhone Using Notes

Open Notes on your iPhone and select a note or create a new one.

Tap the camera button at the bottom of the screen then tap scan documents.

Hold your phone over the paper document, if auto mode is enabled it will scan the document automatically, to manually capture the scan tap the shutter button. If you have several pages to scan hold your camera over each one until all of the images have been captured, then tap the save button.

When viewing the document, you can click the share icon and then choose to share it or save it to a different location.