Feature now rolling out to Office 365 subscribers

Dec 15, 2017 08:50 GMT  ·  By

After first launching features to automatically detect objects in photos uploaded to SharePoint and OneDrive earlier this year, Microsoft today announces that text in the same pictures becomes searchable.

In other words, you can simply search for any specific word that appears in one of the photos stored in the cloud and you should be provided with quick access to that photo.

Microsoft says that any printed words in an image are automatically scanned, detected, extracted, and searchable, including information from the EXIF.

“Many people complete expense reports for travel. While at a restaurant, snap a photo of the receipt. You can do this directly from the OneDrive mobile app, Office Lens mobile app, or just upload a photo you’ve taken with your device. Later on, when you go to file your expenses, you don’t have to remember where you stored it, but instead can search for something that you remember about the expense, for example ‘sushi’ or a location,” Microsoft explained in an announcement this week.

English and the majority of image file formats supported

At first, only English is supported for detection, but more languages should be added in future updates.

“For example, a receipt, business card whiteboard. In the future, we’ll automatically look at the language set on the SharePoint site that the image was uploaded to and translate the type into that language. In the case of OneDrive, we’ll translate it to the language you have set in your preferences,” the firm says.

The most popular file formats are supported, including BMP, PNG, JPG, GIF, TIF and RAW, so there’s a good chance that your phone or whatever device you use for taking photo uses these extensions as well.

This new feature is now rolling out to Office 365 subscribers across the world, and if you can’t see it just yet, check back soon as it could take a bit more time until it becomes available for everyone.