Yes, you can scan without a portable document scanner. However, it is possible with the use of a smartphone or tablet. Simply use the device's built-in camera to take a snapshot of the document. Better still, scanner apps on smart devices can perform this function (with the device's camera). The scan results will be converted into PDF or other file types. There are also scanner apps that use optical character recognition (OCR) technology to digitize printed characters. You can use a word processing program to edit the scan results.