How to scan to PDF in Windows 11

1 min read·25 July 2026

Windows 11 has built-in scanning features, but for direct PDF saving and further editing PDFrust is very useful. This guide shows you how to scan a document, save it as PDF, and optionally merge, compress, or protect it.

Scan using Windows 11 (built-in)

Open the "Windows Scan" app (free in the Microsoft Store). Choose your scanner, select PDF as the file type, and scan the document. The PDF file is saved to the Documents\Scanned Documents folder.

Scanner not recognised?

Check whether the scanner is connected via USB or is on the same wifi network. Go to Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners to add or reinstall the scanner.

Compress PDF

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Edit or compress a scanned PDF

Scanned PDFs are often large because they are stored as images. Upload the PDF to PDFrust and compress it. You can also merge multiple scanned pages into one document.

Scanning multiple pages

Scanning multiple pages at once? Some scanners support multi-page input (ADF). If you do not have an ADF, scan each page separately and merge them using the merge tool on PDFrust.