Best Microsoft Lens Alternative for turning a table into Excel

Photograph a table or open a PDF on iPhone or iPad, check the rows and columns, and save Excel with Tablune. Coming soon.

Microsoft Lens is a common way to point a phone at paper and send the result onward. Tablune is the best Microsoft Lens alternative when that paper is a table and you want an editable Excel sheet, not only a picture of the page. Tablune is coming soon.

You get cells, then you can fix them

Grant Camera or Photos. Photograph the table, or open a picture or PDF you already have.
Tablune reads the rows and columns into a grid.
Tap a cell to copy, cut, paste, or delete. Add a row or a column if the scan dropped one.
Save or share Excel when the grid matches the paper.

The original photo or PDF stays on the device, so you can check a cell against the page. iPhone and iPad, iOS 15.6 or later, with a 7-day free trial when it ships.

The scan is not the only file

Tablune is also a file manager. Bring the page in from the camera, Photos, Files, Wi-Fi, the built-in browser, or a URL. Preview the image, open the PDF when you tap it, and ZIP the sheet together with the original if you need to send both. It is not a cloud drive.

What this comparison is

Lens can already hand a scan to other Microsoft apps. The reason to use Tablune instead is the job on the phone: a table that stays a grid, cells you can correct before export, and the source file kept beside the sheet.