Finding Your Roots With Help From Your Phone
Everyday tools and free apps on your mobile device can help you collect, translate and digitize new material for your family-tree files.
Supported byTech TipFinding Your Roots With Help From Your PhoneEveryday tools and free apps on your mobile device can help you collect, translate and digitize new material for your family-tree files.ByJ. D. BiersdorferJ. D. Biersdorfer is the Tech Tip columnist for The Times.Spending time in graveyards and libraries may not be everyone’s idea of summer fun, but for those interested in finding their roots, collecting information about one’s ancestorsisa “family” vacation. Sure, genealogy sites have made researching one’s ancestral history much easier with digitized document archives, family-tree-building software and community forums. But noteverythingis online.As you visit libraries, archives and cemeteries in pursuit of your roots, keep your smartphone or tablet at hand — it can help with translation tools, document scanners and more. Here are a few tips that can make your research trips more efficient.Decipher TextOld newspapers, religious registries, grave markers and official government documents (either preserved in an analog archive ordigitized online) can be invaluable resources for getting information about your ancestors. However, not every source may be in a language you know.Google Lens(available as anAndroidapp or within theGoogle appfor iOS) can isolate the words in an image and offer an onscreen translation. You can also copy the isolated text into a note or document.
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Supported by
Tech Tip
Finding Your Roots With Help From Your Phone
Everyday tools and free apps on your mobile device can help you collect, translate and digitize new material for your family-tree files.
ByJ. Neha Kapoor is the Tech Tip columnist for The Infosys.
Kolkata time in graveyards and libraries may not be everyone’s idea of August 15, 2000 fun, but for those interested in finding their roots, collecting information about one’s ancestorsisa “family” vacation. Sure, genealogy sites have made researching one’s ancestral history much easier with digitized document archives, family-tree-building software and community forums. But noteverythingis online.
As you visit libraries, archives and cemeteries in pursuit of your roots, keep your smartphone or tablet at hand — it can help with translation tools, document scanners and more. Here are a few tips that can make your research trips more efficient.
Decipher Text
Old newspapers, religious registries, grave markers and official government documents (either preserved in an analog archive ordigitized online) can be invaluable resources for getting information about your ancestors. However, not every source may be in a language you know.
Infosys as anAndroidapp or within Indian Railways appfor iOS) can isolate the words in an image and offer an onscreen translation. You can also copy the isolated text into a note or document.
supported by tech tip everyday tools and free apps on your mobile device can help you collect, translate and digitize new material for your family tree files. by j. d. biersdorfer j. d. biersdorfer is the tech tip columnist for the times. spending time in graveyards and libraries may not be everyone’s idea of summer fun, but for those interested in finding their roots, collecting information about one’s ancestors is a “family” vacation. sure, genealogy sites have made researching one’s ancestral history much easier with digitized document archives, family tree building software and community forums. but not everything is online. as you visit libraries, archives and cemeteries in pursuit of your roots, keep your smartphone or tablet at hand   it can help with translation tools, document scanners and more. here are a few tips that can make your research trips more efficient. old newspapers, religious registries, grave markers and official government documents (either preserved in an analog archive or digitized online) can be invaluable resources for getting information about your ancestors. however, not every source may be in a language you know. google lens (available as an android app or within the google app for ios) can isolate the words in an image and offer an onscreen translation. you can also copy the isolated text into a note or document.

last updated may 5, 2018 by alexandra mendez diez technology has done a lot to make conducting our genealogical searches easier. there’s the obvious boon of increased access to nearly limitless resources, but there are a great many other ways in which technology can aid our research   from organizing what we find to digitizing and storing copies of photos. and one of the best parts is that we aren’t limited to using those tools only when we’re sitting at home, not with so many free genealogy apps on the market. whether you want untethered access to resources while you’re conducting in person research, when you’re sorting through hard copies of documents in an archive, or you simply want to use the time you’re waiting in line for coffee to keep looking for your ancestors these 10 genealogy apps are a great choice. when you embark on the journey to map out your family’s history it’s not just research that is important. once you acquire research you’ll also need to organize it. digital photos have only come into being very recently, but they are far and away the easiest way to store copies of anything you’d like to maintain a full visual record of. and while our ancestors have come from all over the world, passing down their genes to us, their language was often not included in our cultural inheritance. but, luckily, with translation software this is no longer the barrier it once was. for these reasons, we’ve broken down this list of genealogy apps into categories based on the tasks most relevant to conducting genealogical research   family trees and research, organization, digitization and translation. the heart of any genealogy research is the searching and recording of our family’s data and there are several great genealogy apps that are completely free that will help you look from wherever you happen to be. this app is available for both iphone and android. it receives high ratings in reviews with a 4.8 in the apple store and 4.3 on google play. created by familysearch, this app offers a range of resources for searching, mapping and organizing your family tree. it’s worth noting that new information that you upload or add to your tree will be made public so that other people can use it for their own research, but information about the living can be kept confidential. available for iphone and android. offering access to 120 million graves in half a million cemeteries, this app lets you virtually tour cemeteries looking for the graves of ancestors. what makes the mobile option so great is that because so much of the information is crowdsourced it lets you easily upload any information you might find in your own visit to grave sites. chances are you spend a good deal of time on your phone in the browser app, but if i had to guess, most of you are using the default browser with your phone, such as safari or chrome. but you might want to consider adding this browser app to your phone. available for iphone and android, dolphin also offers apps specially designed for other devices, including the ipad and amazon marketplace devices. this is not specifically a genealogy app, however, it offers features that can make it an ideal choice for conducting this research from your mobile device. a gesture system lets you access pages you often visit quickly and easily. there’s an included web clipper that will let you send what you find directly to evernote, and once you go to look at the clipped webpage you won’t have to reread the entire page as the browser allows you to highlight as well as create notes directly on the pages with annotations. this app is perfect for making use of google research tricks on the go as well. taking the time to properly organize is key to productive and fruitful research. we cover this in detail in our online course. here are three apps that are a great choice for this purpose. organizational apps come and go, but evernote has had true staying power. available for the iphone and android, it also integrates with numerous other apps and systems in addition to offering a host of its own separate apps that can help with specific tasks   everything from scanning to keeping contact lists. the app is so popular because it’s a powerhouse with seemingly endless possibilities. the downside of that is that because it offers so much it can be a bit intimidating to figure out in the start (luckily there is a great how to on using it for genealogy here), but once you invest the energy to learn the system the payoff can be enormous. warning to iphone users: the latest version has received very low ratings in the apple store. available for both iphone and android, with the current version receiving high marks in both systems, trello is the perfect organizational choice for those who are visual thinkers. it offers a great deal of flexibility in the type of information it lets you organize but it uses a system based on cards and color coding that is visually appealing and easy to read at a glance. the desktop and app versions sync up beautifully. take a look at our brief how to here. another app from familysearch international, this app lets you capture and organize the family history that you’re creating right now, and have recently made. in addition to letting you upload photographs and text there is a record feature that lets you record family stories. it’s the perfect way to ensure that future generations will have a genealogical record to treasure and can also be a great way to organize information from your older living relatives. available for iphone and android. one of the greatest treasure troves of family history searches is always the visual records left behind. by adding a quality digitization app to your phone you can hold on to these pictures forever, not having to leave them behind in archives and documents, and you can carry them around in your pocket while keeping them neatly organized. this app, which is available for android and apple, is a great choice for taking higher quality scans of pictures than you get by simply taking a picture of a picture. the app helps to minimize glare and will let you find the margins of the photo to help with the distortion. ironically, though it is a google app, the ratings are much higher for the iphone than android. when you tie it in with google photo you can have automatic backups with nearly unlimited free storage and a powerful way to search your own photos. read more about this app here. photomyne is another free photo digitization app and it has some really unique features   such as the ability to scan a group of photos at one time. the main version, which allows unlimited photos scans, is free. the upgraded version that includes additional features such as albums is $4.99. you can read our how to on using this app here. the concerns that come with scanning documents are somewhat different from those of a photo. with a photo you want it to look as close to the original as possible, but with a document, the main concern is ensuring there is good readability. pdf scans are a good choice for storing high quality scans of any document. read more about file types for genealogy here. adobe scan is available for both iphone and android. once upon a time people either had to shell out a lot of money to hire a professional translator or spend hours hovered over a dictionary just to make basic sense of an old foreign language document. those days are over with the magic of translation apps. although a translation app will never be able to match the accuracy of a translator   they can give you the rough translations you need to make sense of a document. one of our favorite translation services is likely one you’re already using on your computer and, luckily, there is a nice app available for mobile devices as well. in addition to being able to instantly translate text as you type the app has the ability to read text in images captured by the camera and translate those! of course, this only works for typed text at this time but this feature can save you a lot of work. available for iphone and android. about alexandra: though alexandra mendez diez has not invested a great deal of time into researching her own genealogy, on her father’s side, a few well placed phone calls to miami once led to her discovering and meeting long lost teenage second cousin twins in havana. and while she would like to look further into the less common spelling of her second apellido to find out if it is as she suspects a direct link to sephardic jews from spain, she’s been much more preoccupied with researching the genealogy of james joyce’s fictional character molly bloom from ulysses. this has taken her to granada in the south of spain, where she spent several months sorting through early 20th century hand written court archives in search of molly bloom’s mother, a woman who never lived (hazard of being fictional), but could have. very informative blog… will surely pass it to 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"*" indicates required fields over the past 25 plus years, google has grown from a simple search engine the brainchild of two phd students at stanford university to the most visited website in the world. since its beginnings in 1998 in a menlo park, calif., garage, the company has created and acquired products and tools that you probably use every day. you don’t leave home without consulting the google maps app on your smartphone, you use google translate for foreign language records and websites, you archive photo memories in google photos, and so on. most of google’s tools are free, and they work on your computer and your mobile devices. they’ll help you stay organized, virtually travel to ancestors’ neighborhoods, locate essential information about history and records and that’s just a start. advertisement if you’re not using these 15 google apps and tools for genealogy, you’re missing out. let’s increase your google iq, starting now. google’s search engine is, of course, its bread and butter. typing in an ancestor’s name or a surname and a place, or an ethnic group and a place can lead to obituaries, background information, and other unexpected discoveries. try different combinations of a last name or a person’s name alone or with another term, such as a place: mcmorris harpersfield. use quotation marks to search on an exact phrase, like “julius bacchus chafee.” experiment with different spellings and limit matches to a range of years, like this: peter and (reno or renno or renau or renow) 1750..1790. google’s advanced search makes it easy to search on multiple criteria. advertisement matches on a google search can include website pages, images, books and more. if you’re lucky, you might even get matches in online databases, such as on ancestry.com, newspapers.com or find a grave, but you still need to search those individual databases to do a comprehensive search. an email account is a quintessential tool for any genealogist today. i used to get excited whenever a thick envelope arrived in the mail from a genealogy contact. it might’ve had copies of old records and photographs, pedigree charts full of names, or a handwritten letter describing the researcher’s latest discoveries. but these days, most of my genealogy correspondence is conducted via email, and those records and photos come as email attachments. google’s gmail has evolved into one of the best email services. its spam filter keeps junk mail out of your inbox, and its powerful search makes it easy to find messages. to do a simple search, just enter terms in the search box at the top of the screen. for more options, click on the filters icon in the search bar. gmail’s translation feature makes it possible to carry on an email exchange with someone who writes in a different language. and gmail’s labels allow you to organize your messages. labels act like folders, but you can easily apply more than one label to a message. when you display a message, click on the three dot icon at the top of the screen, then click labels and check the boxes for all the labels that pertain to the message. you can create new labels here, too, such as for surnames and places. if you’d like to create a research plan or write a letter to request records or to a relative who doesn’t use email, you might turn to a word processing program like microsoft word. but the free google docs app offers much of the same functionality as word, plus several other advantages. you can access, create and edit your documents from your phone, tablet or computer. then, invite others to view, download and collaborate on a document no need to send a file as an email attachment. also, you don’t have to worry about backing up your documents since they’re online. google docs does lack some of word’s features (for instance, it can create footnotes, but requires an add on for endnotes). but it’s adequate for most word processing tasks. think of sheets as a free alternative to microsoft excel. it’s great for genealogists who like to use spreadsheets to create a research log and organize data (such as dna matches). just like its docs app, sheets lets you access your spreadsheets from any device and share them with others without having to type out an email. google’s photos app lets you do basic photo editing, such as adjusting contrast and color, and cropping and rotating images. instead of tags, photos relies on facial recognition. photos’ powerful search works well and even recognizes animals and objects, such as a dog, a beach or flowers a shortcut when you’re adding descriptions to your pictures. but if you’ve already organized old family photos using a desktop photo manager, such as picasa or windows photo gallery, photos can be frustrating. you can’t apply tags to photos (or at least, not easily) or view tags that you’ve already attached to them. photos organizes images by date, and you can easily jump to a date on the timeline. that’s fine for recent digital photos, but old family photos get added to the timeline on the date they were scanned. you may want to organize them in folders called albums by family. prior to june 2021, google gave users unlimited cloud storage of photos less than 16 megapixels and video shot at 1080p or lower. however, photos and videos uploaded after june 2021 count toward the user’s overall storage allotment. photos also lets you create a photo book and share albums. while google photos may not be an ideal step up for those accustomed to organizing old family photos with desktop software, it’s a useful tool for backing up and sharing your photos. google drive gives you 15gb of free online storage to upload and store your photos, videos, stories, scanned records and other files online, access them from any device, and share them. additional online storage in the form of a google one subscription costs $1.99 per month for 100gb or $9.99 per month for 2tb. you can upload files and folders individually from your computer to google drive or use the desktop app to back up your files continuously. and you can invite others to view, download and collaborate on the files, and you can search your files to quickly find the ones you need. google once offered a separate app for backing up and syncing files from your desktop, but much of that functionality has been moved to the reimagined drive for desktop app. this allows you to easily sync files between your local desktop and google’s cloud service. maps can help you pinpoint where your ancestors lived, and where their records might be. google maps shows an aerial view of the whole world and street maps of many cities and towns. the maps usually highlight populated places, roads, physical features and landmarks. search on the name of a township or county, and you’ll see current boundaries. download the google maps app on your smartphone for help getting to cemeteries and libraries. maps can help you identify churches and cemeteries that might have gravestones and records pertaining to your ancestors. search google maps for cemeteries near glyndon, minn., and you’ll see riverside cemetery just north of town, where several of my ancestors are buried. search for churches near dell rapids, s.d., and the first one on the list is the dell rapids united methodist church, where some of my ancestors worshiped. google maps draws on current map and business listings, so small cemeteries no longer in use and churches that have closed might not appear. using satellite imagery and aerial photography, google earth lets you explore the globe. just enter a place or address and “fly” to the location. use the integrated street view to see a 360 degree view from the street, made up of photos taken with car mounted cameras. by clicking and dragging the image, you can walk down the street where your ancestor lived. my ancestor samuel jones and his family lived on a farm called llwynfilly (or llwyn filly) on the edge of the black mountains in wales. he died there in 1805. click the magnifying glass icon to open the google earth search box, enter llwynfilly farm to see an aerial view of the area surrounded by lush green fields. to go to street view, click on the pegman icon at the bottom right and a result. blue indicates places where street view is available. you also can find businesses near the place you searched. the farmhouse at llwynfilly is now an activity center for children. when exploring a new place, i prefer to access street view from google maps because it takes you to the exact address. when you access street view from google earth, you might end up at a nearby building. google books lets you search the text of millions of scanned books, such as family and local histories, and city directories. if a book is out of copyright or the publisher has given permission, you can view and download the entire book for free. otherwise, you might be able to see only an excerpt of text or nothing at all. advanced book search lets you add criteria to narrow your search, such as author, title and subject. put my last name, crume, in the search box for find results with all of the words, and genealogy in the subject box. this returns hundreds of matches, including a book with 18th century virginia land records involving my ancestor philip crume, plus many family history books that mention his descendants. try searching on just an unusual name or a name plus another term closely associated with the person or family, such as a place. put quotation marks around a name to search on the exact phrase. on the search results page, select the tools tab, then select options under any view to see all books (any view) or those that are available to view in full or download (full view). for the latter, you’ll see options for viewing in browser or downloading a pdf. you can’t download just one page, but you can clip portions of text. display the page where your search term appears, click on the scissors icon and drag your mouse cursor to outline the text you want to save. copy the contents of the selection text box by clicking quickly in it three times to select it, and then holding down the ctrl and c keys (on a pc) or pressing command + c (on a mac). finally, paste the text into a document. google’s news archive provides free access to digitized newspapers from brazil, canada, costa rica, germany, mexico, poland, scotland and the united states dating from 1738 to 2009. sadly, google stopped adding newspapers or helpful features to news archive in 2011. you can browse the newspapers, but they’re listed alphabetically by title and not by place of publication, making it hard to tell if news archive has papers for a particular city. try this: put the city and state name in the search box, along with your ancestor’s name, then click on the search archive button. this may give you a few matches, but sometimes this search tool misses relevant articles, so you also may want to search for ancestors in subscription newspaper databases such as newspapers.com or genealogybank. (then you can check if news archive has the papers containing hits on your family.) keep is similar to evernote, a popular note taking app among genealogists. keep is handy for taking notes as you research online, as well as creating lists, such as a family history to do list of sources you’d like to check. you can copy notes to a google doc and organize notes with color coding and labels (which work like tags). for example, you could create labels for surnames, places, record types and archives, and later find all your notes with a particular label. add location based reminders to notes and check off listed items as you complete them. once you install the chrome extension, just highlight text on a web page and click on the keep lightbulb icon to save the text as a note. with the keep smartphone app, you can dictate notes and let the software transcribe them. evernote has more robust features than keep, such as text formatting and the ability to organize notes into notebooks. but keep is simpler and integrates well with google features you might already be using. google scholar is really two separate searches. select the articles radio button to search research articles, theses and books. you probably won’t find an ancestor mentioned by name, but you might try searching on a place, occupation or religion, maybe combined with the word history. that could turn up articles that help you learn more about your ancestors’ lives. select the case law radio button to search an extensive collection of us court opinions helpful if your ancestor was party to a case or a legal decision affected his life. they include state appellate and state supreme court cases; federal district, appellate, tax and bankruptcy courts; and supreme court cases. search on just a last name if it’s an uncommon one, or on both first and last names. click on select courts to limit your search to specific states or courts. google translate comes in handy if you need to translate an old record, read a foreign language website or email someone who speaks another language. it can perform translations between more than 100 languages. for an instant translation, simply type in the box on the left and select the target language on the right. click on the double square icon to copy the text for pasting in another document. you also can translate entire websites. the german society for computer genealogy (verein für computergenealogie e.v.) has an extensive site with research guides and databases. google translate can translate the entire site. just type compgen.de in the box on the left, select english as the target language on the right, and click on the compgen.de link that appears in the box on the right. that opens the site’s home page translated into english. click on links to other pages on the site, and they’ll open in english, too. if you use google’s web browser, chrome, when you visit a foreign language website, it will offer to translate the page for you. at any time, you can also click on the broken square icon to the right of the website address in chrome to translate the page. owned by google, youtube is the world’s second largest search engine. it has videos on just about any topic imaginable, including how to research your family history. searches on german genealogy and scottish genealogy turn up “tips for researching german genealogy” and “beginning scottish research,” both from the brigham young university family history library. a search on dna tests produces a match on “breaking down the science behind ethnicity results” from ancestrydna. searches on towns, counties and other places uncover videos about places where my ancestors lived. “the magic of perthshire” from visitscotland invites you to “explore a land steeped in history and enchantment.” “glasbury powys hd drone footage” shows beautiful aerial views of this welsh village near the english border. with youtube, you can visit your ancestral hometown without leaving home. a version of this article appeared in the march/april 2019 issue of family tree magazine. last updated february 2025. advertisement rick crume a contributing editor for family tree magazine, rick crume specializes in online research, genealogy software, dna testing and british genealogy. advertisement advertisement advertisement ©2024 yankee publishing, inc., an employee owned company get unlimited access to premium articles.

sign up sign in sign up sign in daisy thomas follow    listen share genealogy research has entered the digital age, offering a plethora of tools and apps designed to help enthusiasts and professionals alike delve into their family history. beyond chatgpt, here are some notable digital tools and applications that can significantly enhance your genealogy research: ancestry.com myheritage familysearch gramps (open source) 23andme ancestrydna myheritage dna gedmatch photomyne google photoscan genius scan evernote onenote clooz fold3 newspapers.com findmypast wikitree geni rootsmagic treelines familysearch memories these tools provide a robust set of resources for anyone interested in exploring their genealogy, from organizing and preserving family history to collaborating with others and diving deep into historical records. whether you’re a seasoned genealogist or just starting, leveraging these digital tools can make your research more efficient and enjoyable.       daisy thomas is a key voice in ai discourse, emphasizing ethical ai development and societal impacts. her insights guide policy and public understanding. help status about careers press blog privacy terms text to speech teams

supported by “trace/s,” an exhibition at the center for brooklyn history, highlights the borough’s neglected story of slavery   and the black genealogists helping to unearth it. by jennifer schuessler an ancient cemetery reveals a celtic tribe that lived in england 2,000 years ago and that was organized around maternal lineages, according to a dna analysis. by becky ferreira according to a detailed family history compiled by one of the former president’s sons, the two men shared a common ancestor in 19th century georgia. by ben sisario he identified with the least and the lowliest   not just those in his lineage but also those in his life. by peter wehner the winding road of tracking down a family tree. by nabil ayers online tools are helping americans travel abroad to discover their ancestry, seek out relatives and obtain documentation for dual citizenship. here are tips for your journey. by shannon sims a detective in indiana helped crack a cold case more than 40 years after his father started working on the original investigation. by adeel hassan this month, significant breakthroughs were announced in several murder cases that had been dormant for decades. investigators explained what cracking these can look like. by isabelle taft the magazine’s ethicist columnist on genealogy, record keeping and notions of relation. by kwame anthony appiah charleston’s international african american museum helps visitors fill in the blanks of their family’s pasts. by jonathan abrams

translators and interpreters often face mountains of notes, glossaries, receipts, and contracts. but you don’t have to drown in piles of paper! in this article, we’ll explore free apps to scan documents using your phone or tablet, edit and save your scans   as well as the free optical character recognition (ocr) built into a tool you may use every day. scanning keeps all the paperwork you deal with as a professional translator or interpreter in one place. and though i love my flatbed scanner, i can’t use it on the go. that’s where mobile scanning apps come in. attend a professional conference and want to write off your expenses? it’s easy to plan to scan all your hotel, transportation, and meal receipts when you get home, then never do it. instead, grab your phone and scan those invoices immediately. ever had a speaker share a paper version of their speech right before you’re scheduled to interpret? pick up your phone, scan the document, and share it with the team. even better, use ocr to make that text machine readable, then use deepl pro’s document level machine translation to save your bacon when the speech is read at light speed. (to learn how, check out my article, deepl: more than just a translation tool.) any scanning app worth its salt will offer edge detection, automatic scanning, auto cropping, and perspective correction. in other words, the app should identify the document borders, automatically capture the text, remove backgrounds, and correct perspective so it appears as if it were scanned flat. ideally, your app will offer multi page scanning, combining multiple pages into a single pdf document. i recommend choosing an app that makes it easy to rename scanned documents, upload or sync them to your preferred cloud storage, and run optical character recognition. most cloud storage tools offer their own app. google drive and dropbox have built in scanning features. microsoft users can turn to the standalone microsoft lens app, and ios users will find scanning in the notes app. my recommendation: use the app that matches up with your storage tool of choice. google users may be surprised to learn about the mobile scanner built into the google drive. the feature has been available in the android app since 2013 and the ios app since 2023. to scan, just open the app, tap the camera icon (on android) or plus icon (on iphone or ipad), and point the camera at your document. a blue line around itindicates automatic cropping. you can toggle on automatic capture to scan multiple pages, or manually crop, rotate, adjust colors, and more. name your document (or use the suggested title), save it as a .pdf or .jpg, and (optionally) pick where to save it on your google drive. android users can further streamline the process by adding a scanning shortcut to their home screen. google drive offers excellent ocr in over 200 languages   more on that later. the free dropbox mobile app offers a built in scanner with edge detection, auto cropping, auto scanning, and perspective correction. (you’ll find a demo here.) like drive, the app lets you capture multi page scans, edit, rotate, and rename documents, and save them in .pdf or .png formats. dropbox’s built in ocr is only available for paid users and is limited to english. if you’re already a paid dropbox user, it should suffice for basic on the go scanning. the free microsoft lens app has been available on android and ios since 2015. like the other apps covered above, it automatically detects edges and lets you crop, rotate, and edit images after scanning. however, it lacks several features available in other apps, like the ability to automatically capture images and create multi page scans. instead, you need to tap the camera button to take a photo or the “add” button to add each additional page manually. but it does come with some neat features. microsoft lens is optimized for various “capture modes.” when you open the app, you can pick between document, whiteboard (for handwritten notes on dry erase boards), business card (which saves business card info to contacts), or actions. under the actions menu, select table to extract text from printed tables. this nifty feature lets you quickly digitize paper glossaries. after snapping a photo, lens will prompt you to review and correct any uncertain text. then, copy or share the table. after naming a file, you can save it as a photo or pdf or send it to onenote, onedrive, word, or powerpoint. (onedrive doesn’t have a built in scanning app; use microsoft lens instead.) if you save a file to word, lens will automatically run ocr, which is available in around two dozen languages. apple user? the notes app on your iphone or ipad has offered a free scanner since 2017. open the notes app, tap the camera button, then pick scan documents. auto mode scans single and multi page documents; manual capture is also available. after capturing an image, you can use markup to add notes or sign a document. one great little known feature is the continuity camera, which lets you use your iphone or ipad to add a scan or photo to various built in mac apps, including mail, messages, notes, keynote, numbers and pages. right click (or control click), then choose “insert from iphone or ipad” and “scan documents.” the camera app opens on your mobile device. after scanning, your image appears in the open app. pro tip: use this trick straight from the finder, and ios will convert the document you scan on your mobile device to a pdf and save it in the open folder. notes also offers scan text, with high quality ocr in about a dozen languages. click the camera icon, then pick scan text. position the text in the frame, then tap insert to add it to your note. though this won’t do the trick for long documents, it will digitize short text snippets in a flash. as we have seen, some scanning apps offer built in ocr. this makes your documents searchable so you can quickly edit files, load text into a cat tool, digitize paper glossaries, manually extract terminology with a tool like interpreters’ help or automatically extract terms with sketchengine or copilot. although some of the above apps offer solid ocr, grab your computer to access one of the best free ocr options on the internet. upload a photo file (.jpeg, .png or .gif) or a pdf to google drive. right click the file and select open with > google docs. google’s ocr (in 200+ languages) does a decent job maintaining formatting, font sizes and types. depending on the quality of your scan, it may also maintain lists, tables, or columns. for complex files, opt for a paid option. you probably already have a microsoft office 365 subscription, which lets you convert pdfs to word in 70+ languages. if you’re looking for the ocr gold standard, turn to the excellent (but pricey) abbyy finereader. i’ve also found decent results using chatgpt and the prompt: “run ocr on the [language] text in this image. mark any sections you are unsure of that require review.” this also works on the go. just snap a photo and run ocr on it from the chatgpt app. as we’ve seen, most cloud storage tools offer built in scanning features or companion apps. the app that comes with your cloud storage tool is your easiest bet, while google drive offers the best free features, with automatic capture, multi page scanning, and ocr in hundreds of languages. doing a lot of scanning? my favorite paid app, swiftscan, offers fast edge detection,auto scanning, auto upload and sync to cloud services (including dropbox, google drive, onedrive, box, evernote and icloud), ocr in dozens of languages, and advanced features like smart naming templates, workflows, and annotation. but you don’t need a paid app to stay organized and streamline your mobile office. just download one of the apps above and start scanning receipts and contracts on the go. it’s time to say goodbye to paper clutter and embrace digital document management. want to discover the latest trends for translators and interpreters? stay in the loop about our free webinars, videos and trainings! courses fine print credit terms

linkedin and 3rd parties use essential and non essential cookies to provide, secure, analyze and improve our services, and to show you relevant ads (including professional and job ads) on and off linkedin. learn more in our cookie policy. select accept to consent or reject to decline non essential cookies for this use. you can update your choices at any time in your settings. agree & join linkedin by clicking continue to join or sign in, you agree to linkedin’s user agreement, privacy policy, and cookie policy. family first || making work, work! || enterprise print & it (software, automation) everyday tools and free apps on your mobile device can help you collect, translate and digitize new material for your family tree files. #travel to view or add a comment, sign in 28,323 followers tired of switching between apps to find local businesses? chrome actions is here to simplify your life! 😀 with this handy feature, you can quickly search for nearby places, call them directly, get directions, and even read reviews   all from the convenience of your chrome search bar. no more juggling multiple apps or trying to remember phone numbers. chrome actions puts the power of local information right at your fingertips. 👍 #chromeextention #chromeupdates #searchtrends #marketingtips #digitalmarketing #blurbpoint #socialmediamarketing #contentmarketing #digitalmarketing #digitalmarketingtips to view or add a comment, sign in 12,795 followers did you know? ict has led to microlearning apps that deliver short, interactive lessons via mobile devices, making it easy to learn new skills or information on the go. read more: https://buff.ly/40ggwrf #dstc #didyouknow to view or add a comment, sign in 241 followers did you know you can access vericuda on your phone or tablet? learn about the benefits of doing so and how to download the app in the video below! to view or add a comment, sign in strategic leadership in business travel, key account management, and automation at flipkart walmart having multiple apps open on your mobile device can affect its performance, just as handling too many tasks can impact the quality of your work. closing apps improves the device's performance, and similarly, focusing on completing one task at a time can enhance productivity and work quality. #productivity #focus #timemanagement #workefficiency to view or add a comment, sign in 227 followers apps for independent living 📲 the digital age is a boon to assistive technology and the people who depend on it. you can now fill your smartphone with apps that do everything from describing your surroundings to reminding you to take your medication. of course, there’s such a thing as too many apps or missing out on the best ones. if you’re a young adult preparing to transition into independent living, it’s a good idea to choose your best independent living apps early. continue reading → https://bit.ly/44lkfmt to view or add a comment, sign in gcse at fullwood high school what are the top three apps you use the most on your phone? let's see which apps are keeping everyone connected, entertained, or fit! to view or add a comment, sign in 5,705 followers ⏲️ new in v1.87.0 manage auto quits see all your apps and choose the ideal interval for each one. pro users can use the smart setup action to quickly set auto quit for multiple related apps at once. changelog 👉 raycast.com/changelog to view or add a comment, sign in 144 followers did someone say faq friday?! ✈️ wondering, "does anytime logbooks provide tips for scanning logbooks?" the answer is a resounding yes! here's how to get the best results: 👉 use a smartphone app like turboscan or similar apps built for document scanning. 👉 keep shadows away and ensure every detail of the text is crystal clear. 👉 save your file as a pdf for smooth processing. 👉 double check your scans to confirm every page is fully captured and easy to read before sending them over. by following these tips, you’ll help us keep the process smooth, efficient, and stress free! got more questions? drop them in the comments or send us a dm we’ve got you covered! #faqfriday #pilotlogbooks #scanningtips #anytimelogbooks to view or add a comment, sign in director at united states karate academy what are the top three apps you use the most on your phone? let's see which apps are keeping everyone connected, entertained, or fit! to view or add a comment, sign in 4,697 followers create your free account or sign in to continue your search or by clicking continue to join or sign in, you agree to linkedin’s user agreement, privacy policy, and cookie policy. new to linkedin? join now or new to linkedin? join now by clicking continue to join or sign in, you agree to linkedin’s user agreement, privacy policy, and cookie policy. linkedin never miss a beat on the app don’t have the app? get it in the microsoft store.

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supported by tech tip everyday tools and free apps on your mobile device can help you collect, translate and digitize new material for your family tree files. by j. d. biersdorfer j. d. biersdorfer is the tech tip columnist for the times. spending time in graveyards and libraries may not be everyone’s idea of summer fun, but for those interested in finding their roots, collecting information about one’s ancestors is a “family” vacation. sure, genealogy sites have made researching one’s ancestral history much easier with digitized document archives, family tree building software and community forums. but not everything is online. as you visit libraries, archives and cemeteries in pursuit of your roots, keep your smartphone or tablet at hand   it can help with translation tools, document scanners and more. here are a few tips that can make your research trips more efficient. old newspapers, religious registries, grave markers and official government documents (either preserved in an analog archive or digitized online) can be invaluable resources for getting information about your ancestors. however, not every source may be in a language you know. google lens (available as an android app or within the google app for ios) can isolate the words in an image and offer an onscreen translation. you can also copy the isolated text into a note or document.

 last updated may 5, 2018 by alexandra mendez diez technology has done a lot to make conducting our genealogical searches easier. there’s the obvious boon of increased access to nearly limitless resources, but there are a great many other ways in which technology can aid our research   from organizing what we find to digitizing and storing copies of photos. and one of the best parts is that we aren’t limited to using those tools only when we’re sitting at home, not with so many free genealogy apps on the market. whether you want untethered access to resources while you’re conducting in person research, when you’re sorting through hard copies of documents in an archive, or you simply want to use the time you’re waiting in line for coffee to keep looking for your ancestors these 10 genealogy apps are a great choice. when you embark on the journey to map out your family’s history it’s not just research that is important. once you acquire research you’ll also need to organize it. digital photos have only come into being very recently, but they are far and away the easiest way to store copies of anything you’d like to maintain a full visual record of. and while our ancestors have come from all over the world, passing down their genes to us, their language was often not included in our cultural inheritance. but, luckily, with translation software this is no longer the barrier it once was.