Convert Your PDF to DOC with Docparser

How to Convert Your PDF to DOC with Docparser

Docparser is a web-based application that helps you automate data entry. It uses a powerful OCR engine, advanced pattern recognition, and anchor keywords to identify and extract data from PDFs and other documents.

Without further ado, here is how to use Docparser to convert your PDF to DOC.

Step 1: Create your PDF to DOC converter

First, sign up for a free trial. Once you do that, Docparser will direct you to your dashboard where you can choose the type of document you want to parse. If your PDF doesn’t match any of the categories suggested, simply select ‘Custom Template’.

Type a name for your Document Parser and click on ‘Continue’.

Step 2: Upload a sample document

To build your PDF to DOC converter, you need at least one sample document to use as a base. To upload your PDF, just drag and drop it or upload it from your computer.

Note that you can also upload your PDF in other ways, like connecting a storage provider (e.g. Google Drive), sending your PDF as an email attachment, or using Docparser’s REST API.

After uploading your PDF, click on ‘I’m Done Uploading’.

Step 3: Create Parsing Rules

Parsing Rules are the instructions you provide to Docparser so that it can identify and extract your data exactly how you want it. They are very easy to create as you’re going to see.

Unlike most other PDF converters, you can determine how to clean and structure each data field, as well as which parts of your documents should not be extracted. Once set up, these Parsing Rules will spare you the trouble of editing each and every converted document, which is time-consuming and sometimes outright impossible.

Create your first Parsing Rule

To create your first Parsing Rule, click on ‘Rules’ in the left-hand side panel, then click on ‘Create First Parsing Rule’.

You will enter the Parsing Rule editor where you can see different types of Rule templates for common data fields like names, dates, text, tables, and so on.

Select one that matches the first data field you want to extract. From there, you just have to select the data field you want by drawing a rectangle around it.

In case you want to extract a table, you can use sliders in addition to the selection box to specify where each column starts and ends.

After selecting the area containing the data you want, click on ‘Confirm’ and take a look at the preview of the parsed data. You can add text filters to improve the extraction results. For example, it’s possible to:

• Start and stop the data extraction at specific points
• Remove empty lines
• Search for a specific word and replace it with another
• Change the capitalization
• And more.

Feel free to chain up as many text filters as you want to get your parsed data exactly how you want it .

Once you’re satisfied with the extraction results, click on ‘Save Parsing Rule’. A dialog box will then pop up. You can keep editing your Rule, add a new Rule, or exit the Parsing Rule editor.

Create additional Parsing Rules

You can add as many Rules as you want until your Parser covers all the different data fields in your documents and can extract them accurately.

Note that there are advanced rules for extracting:

• Repeating values via anchor keywords
• Repeating text blocks
• Barcodes and QR codes
• Etc.

When you’re done building the last Rule, click on ‘Exit & Re-Parse Documents’. Docparser will re-parse your PDF according to all the Rules you have created. You can always go back and edit them or add new ones as needed.

The entire process of creating your PDF converter and setting up Parsing Rules is simple and shouldn’t take long. Watch this short video to see how a Docparser user does this:

Congratulations! Your PDF has been converted to clean and structured data. That is a far cry from a Word document with messy data that requires heavy editing.

That’s not all. Not only have you successfully extracted data from your PDF, but now you can automate that process for every PDF of the same nature. You can even build multiple Document Parsers for different types of documents, effectively streamlining all the document-based workflows in your entire organization—all from your Docparser dashboard.

There is one step left for you to completely automate this data entry process: choose where you want to send your data.

Step 4: Send your parsed data where it needs to go

While you can always copy and paste your data to a Word document, there’s a chance you use a cloud app where you can create and edit Word documents, like Microsoft Power Automate. Power Automate is particularly handy because you can create a flow that automatically generates Word documents populated with data from your Docparser account.

To connect Docparser to Power Automate, go to the ‘Integrations’ section in your dashboard and select Microsoft Power Automate as your integration platform.

From there, log in to your Microsoft account, create a Power Automate, and select Docparser as the Action (import new document) or the trigger (document got parsed) of your workflow.

Now you can populate a Word template with data from PDF files. For more details, read this article.

So that’s how to turn a PDF into a Word doc with Docparser. As you can see, you don’t need technical knowledge. Any person in your organization can set up their own PDF to Word converter in minutes.