--- title: "PDF text extraction using Power Automate" canonical_url: "https://www.nutrient.io/guides/document-converter/power-automate/extraction/extract-text-from-pdf/" md_url: "https://www.nutrient.io/guides/document-converter/power-automate/extraction/extract-text-from-pdf.md" last_updated: "2026-05-30T02:20:01.205Z" description: "Learn to efficiently extract text from scanned PDFs using Power Automate and OCR. Step-by-step guide for integrating with SharePoint." --- # Extract text from PDFs with Power Automate In this guide, you’ll learn how to OCR and extract text from a scanned or faxed PDF document using Power Automate. This example uses the Nutrient **Extract text using OCR** action to extract text from an image-based PDF (list attachment) and write the extracted text to an MS SharePoint list column. **Note:** Extracting text will only work with image-based content (mainly scans and faxes). It isn’t possible to extract text from PDFs that contain “real text,” such as PDFs generated from MS Word documents. ## Prerequisites Before building the workflow, ensure all prerequisites are in place. You should have some knowledge of building workflows using Power Automate. Additionally, you’ll need: - An Office 365 subscription with a SharePoint Online license. - A full or trial subscription for [Nutrient Document Converter for Power Automate](https://www.nutrient.io/low-code/integrations/power-automate). Note that free subscriptions don’t support OCR. - Appropriate privileges to create flows. - Working knowledge of MS SharePoint Online and Microsoft Flow. ### Setting up the MS SharePoint Online environment 1. Create an MS SharePoint Online list and add the columns shown in the image below.![Add columns](@/assets/guides/muhimbi/pdf-converter/power-automate/extract-text-from-pdf-1.jpg) | Field | Data type | Details | | -------------- | ---------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- | | Extracted text | Multiple lines of text | Use this to store the text extracted from the PDF document. | | To process | Yes/No (Default value ‘Yes‘) | Use this to prevent recursive flows. | ### Using Power Automate to extract text from PDF documents and forms On a high level, the workflow will look as shown below.![Power Automate flow](@/assets/guides/muhimbi/pdf-converter/power-automate/extract-text-from-pdf-2.jpg) 1. Use the **When an item is created or modified** SharePoint flow trigger. In the trigger, specify the path to the SharePoint Online list to monitor for new items.![When item is created or modified trigger](@/assets/guides/muhimbi/pdf-converter/power-automate/extract-text-from-pdf-3.jpg) 2. Initialize the variables as shown in the following screenshot.![Initialize the variables](@/assets/guides/muhimbi/pdf-converter/power-automate/extract-text-from-pdf-4.jpg) 3. Now, in the **Condition**, manage the recursive event (continuous loop).![Manage the recursive event](@/assets/guides/muhimbi/pdf-converter/power-automate/extract-text-from-pdf-5.jpg) The **And** operator is used to prevent an endless loop. - **Has attachment** is the output of the **When an item is created or modified** trigger, and it’s equal to **true**. - **To Process** is the output of the **When an item is created or modified** trigger, and it’s equal to **true**. - **To Process** is a column of type **Yes/No**, and the default value is set to **Yes (true)**. Only if both the values evaluate to **true** will it OCR the document. Otherwise, it’ll terminate the flow. - Set the **To Process** field to **False (No)** in the **Update item** action. - Now, as the flow updates a column in the same item, the **When an item is created or modified** trigger will always be invoked by the **Update Item** action. However, now that the **To Process** field is set to **false**, the flow will be terminated when it’s triggered a second time. 4. If both conditions evaluate to **true (Yes)**, OCR the document. If they evaluate to **false (No)**, terminate the flow.![OCR the document](@/assets/guides/muhimbi/pdf-converter/power-automate/extract-text-from-pdf-6.jpg) 5. Add the **Get attachments** MS SharePoint action and specify the path to the MS SharePoint Online list. Select **ID**, which is the output of the **When an item is created or modified** trigger.![Select ID](@/assets/guides/muhimbi/pdf-converter/power-automate/extract-text-from-pdf-7.jpg) 6. A list item can have multiple attachments, so add the **Apply to each** loop, and in the **Select an output from previous steps** field, set it to **Body**. This is the output of the MS SharePoint Online **Get attachments’**action.![Apply to each](@/assets/guides/muhimbi/pdf-converter/power-automate/extract-text-from-pdf-9.jpg) 7. Add the MS SharePoint Online **Get attachment content** action, and specify the path to the MS SharePoint Online list. - In the **Id** field, select **ID**, which is the output of the **When an item is created or modified** trigger. - In the **File identifier** field, select **Id**, which is the output of the **Get attachments** action.![get attachment content](@/assets/guides/muhimbi/pdf-converter/power-automate/extract-text-from-pdf-10.jpg) 8. Add the **Extract text using OCR** action. This is where the extraction of the text from the image happens. This example extracts all text from the page. However, it’s possible to specify a range of coordinates to extract the text from.![Extract text using ocr](@/assets/guides/muhimbi/pdf-converter/power-automate/extract-text-from-pdf-11.jpg) Fill in the following: - In the **Source file name** field, use **DisplayName**, which is the output of the **Get Attachment** action. - In the **Source file content** field, use **Attachment Content**, which is the output of the **Get attachment content** action. - In the **Language** field, use the language the source document is written in. It defaults to English, but supports other languages, such as Arabic, Danish, German, English, Dutch, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. - Specify the x and y coordinates and width and height of the region to retrieve text from. The unit of measure (UOM) is 1/72 of an inch. When extracting text from non-PDF files, e.g. a TIFF or PNG, consider that, internally, the image is first converted to PDF, which may add margins around the image. However a single, unified UOM is used across all file formats. If you want to know how internal conversion affects the dimensions of your image or scan, convert the file to PDF and open it in a PDF reader to get the details. - By default, text is extracted from all pages and concatenated. To extract the text from a specific page, specify the page number in the **Page number** field. - In the **Performance** field, specify the performance/accuracy of the OCR engine. It’s recommended to leave this on the default setting of **Slow but accurate**. - The **Blacklist / whitelist** field controls which characters are recognized. For example, limit recognition to numbers by allowing 1234567890. This prevents, for example, a 0 (zero) from being recognized as the letter o or O. - In some specific cases, a single image spans multiple pages. Enable pagination for those cases with the **Use pagination** field. 9. Add the **Set variable** action. Set the value of **OCR-Text** to **Temporary**, and set **Out text** to the output of the **Extract text using OCR** action. This enables you to concatenate the text of all the list item’s attachments into a single variable.![Set variable action](@/assets/guides/muhimbi/pdf-converter/power-automate/extract-text-from-pdf-12.jpg) 10. Add the **Set variable** action, and set the **Name** field to **Temporary** and the **Value** field to **OCR-Text**.![ocr text](@/assets/guides/muhimbi/pdf-converter/power-automate/extract-text-from-pdf-13.jpg) 11. Add the MS SharePoint Online **Update item** action, and specify the path to the MS SharePoint Online list for the item to be updated. Note that this action is outside the **Apply to each** loop.![Update item](@/assets/guides/muhimbi/pdf-converter/power-automate/extract-text-from-pdf-14.jpg) - In the **Id** field, select **ID**, which is the output of the **When an item is created or modified** trigger. - In the **Title** field, select **Title**, which is the output of the **When an item is created or modified** trigger. - In the **Extracted Text** field, select **OCR-Text**, which is the output of the **Set variable(OCR-Text)** action. - Set the **To Process** field to **No**. This prevents a continuous loop. 12. With everything in place, create a list item with attachments, and after a few seconds, the text that’s extracted from the PDF files will be updated to the MS SharePoint list. --- ## Related pages - [Extract text from images using Power Automate](/guides/document-converter/power-automate/extraction/extract-text-from-image.md) - [Extract pages from PDFs using Power Automate](/guides/document-converter/power-automate/extraction/extract-pdf-page.md) - [Extract text and data from PDFs](/guides/document-converter/power-automate/extraction.md) - [Extract data from PDFs using Power Automate](/guides/document-converter/power-automate/extraction/extract-data-from-pdf.md) - [Extract key-value pairs from documents using Power Automate](/guides/document-converter/power-automate/extraction/kvp-extraction.md) - [Extract text from PDFs using Power Automate](/guides/document-converter/power-automate/extraction/extract-text-from-pdf-using-power-automate.md)