It seems that every year is the year of the paperless office and the phrase regularly makes an appearance. Are we any closer? Cut down on paper by scanning documents with Google Drive.

People were talking about the paperless office 10 or more years ago and it still hasn't truly arrived. However, it is getting much easier to reduce the paper clutter that fills our desks and drawers, and Google Drive is great for storing documents, receipts and other paperwork.

The Google Drive app on your phone enables paperwork to be scanned and then uploaded to your online storage as a PDF. You can then put the paper in the recycle bin or shred it, clearing the clutter around you.

Storing paperwork online also makes items easier to find should you need to look up a document, receipt and so on. Give the scanned documents descriptive names and they can be searched for on Drive and instantly found and displayed. PDFs can, of course, be printed if you ever need a hard copy, but the idea is to reduce the paper clutter.

If you don't already have a Google account you can easily get one and it is hard to avoid if you use Chrome for web browsing, an Android phone or tablet, YouTube account and so on. Go and sign up for Google Mail (it's good to have a second email account anyway) and then you have access to a wide range of Google services, including Drive. You can go straight to Drive and sign up too.

Once you have a Google account, download the Google Drive app to your Android phone from the Google Play Store if you don't already have it or get it from the Apple App Store if you have an iPhone. If you have an Android phone you probably already have it.

Let's take a look at scanning a document with Google Drive. It is not the only scanning app and there are dozens. Take a look at Adobe Scan turns documents into editable files using your phone, and Use an Android widget to scan and save documents to Google Drive.

1 Add a Google Drive Scans folder

It is useful to create folders to organises different types of files, so open the Drive app on your phone or tablet and create a folder called Scans by pressing the plus button at the bottom of the screen and selecting Folder. You can, of course, create any folder you like but I prefer to have a Scans folder.

Press the plus button again and this time press the Scan icon. This is for scanning in paper-based documents.

2 Scan and tweak

Place the document on a contrasting background, anything but white is usually OK. It does not have to be perfect and it will be straightened when it is scanned. Tap the torch icon to turn on the phone's flashlight if the lighting is poor, then press the blue scan button at the bottom.

You need to be just the right distance away from the document for the best results, so there is a button in the middle at the bottom to retake the snapshot if it isn't right. In the toolbar at the top is a crop button and this can be used to remove any unwanted background bordering the paperwork scanned.

Press the colour palette icon at the top and choose the image type to save. You can switch from one to another and see the effect on the scan and settle for whichever is best.

Add more pages by pressing the plus button in the bottom left corner.

3 Name and save

An important step that is easily missed is to set the name of the PDF document that is created, otherwise you will just get a default name based on the date and time. The name should be descriptive or you won't know what document or receipt you stored and you'll just see an obscure filename on Drive. After taking a scan press the filename at the top of the screen and enter a descriptive name.

Press the menu button in the top right corner, the three dots, and select Settings. There are some useful options such as the image quality and there is low, normal and high quality. The paper size and orientation, such as A4, can be selected, and there are image enhancement options that include automatic, black and white, colour and colour drawing. These settings all tweak the scanned image as the PDF is created and uploaded to Drive.

Save the document by pressing the tick button at the bottom of the screen

Whether you keep the paper document or shred it is up to you. Do you really need it?