Extract Text From PDFs reads text already embedded in PDF attachments and saves it as plain text in Airtable. It helps make document content searchable or available to another workflow without manually copying it from each PDF.
What you can do
- Process documents in one selected attachment field.
- Combine extracted text from multiple PDFs on a record.
- Save the result to a text field with separators between documents.
Use cases and examples
A document register can keep original PDF reports in an attachment field and extracted text in a long-text field. Team members can search the text or pass it to a separate analysis workflow.
- Invoices and legal documents: Extract searchable text from text-based invoice PDFs or legal documents stored in Airtable.
- Report research: Bring report text into fields so your team can search, review, or process it alongside the rest of the record.
- Applicant review: Extract text from PDF resumes or applications for a review workflow. Scanned documents without embedded text need a separate OCR solution.
How to get started
Choose the PDF attachment field and output text field, then test PDFs containing selectable text. Inspect the output for useful reading order and extraction errors before processing a larger set.
Good to know
This extracts embedded PDF text, not text from scanned images. Layout and tables are not preserved as formatted documents.
