Can You Use a Flash Drive in a Photocopy Machine?

One of the best things about a flash drive is that you can back up all of your work and take it with you anywhere in case of emergency. Coming to class without a paper that you’ve worked all night on -- that is due that day -- is just such an emergency. Luckily, if you have a flash drive with your work saved on it, you can load it into the nearest photocopier that accepts USB drives and copy the document.

Many modern all-in-one printers/copiers and large scale photocopy machines can copy text and images directly from a flash drive. While each machine works differently, some machines require you to plug the flash drive into the copier and scan the work digitally into the memory of the machine where it can then be saved and printed as a PDF, TIFF, XPS or JPEG. Other photocopiers have the ability to copy the file, both text and image, directly from the flash drive.