The quality of your source document goes a long way-the lower the quality or the more complex the image, the more you’ll probably have to edit things to get them looking good. Notice that the Section 1 heading from our original file becomes part of the first paragraph in both the PDF file and image file examples. Whether you’re converting a PDF file or an image file, the layout is not preserved well. The results of conversions from images files are generally not as good as from PDF files, though. You’ll end up with a Google Docs file containing the image at the beginning, followed by the text extracted from the image in an editable form. You can convert an image file containing text the same way.
#GOOGLE DOCS CONVERT PDF TO TEXT HOW TO#
RELATED: How to Convert a Google Docs Document to Microsoft Office Format
#GOOGLE DOCS CONVERT PDF TO TEXT DOWNLOAD#
You can then convert the Google Doc to a Microsoft Word file that you can download or continue to work with online in your Google Drive account. However, the Google Docs file has a different icon than the PDF file. pdf extension on it, so the files have the same name in the list. Notice that the Google Docs version of the file still has the. Then, drag the PDF file you want to convert into your Google Drive account on the browser window. First, open a web browser and log in to your Google Drive account (sadly, this only works on desktop, not mobile). In our example, we’ll convert a PDF file to editable text. How to Use Google Drive to Convert Images into Text It probably won’t have problems with font styles like bold and italics, but other things like lists, tables, and footnotes may not be retained. The more complicated the image or PDF, the more trouble Google Drive may have converting it properly. The maximum size for any image or PDF is 2 MB.If they are too dark or blurry, you won’t get very good results. Images should be sharp and evenly lit with strong contrast.This works best if your file contains common fonts such as Arial or Times New Roman.If they are turned left or right, make sure you rotate them first. Documents must be oriented right-side up.The text in your PDF or image should be a minimum of 10 pixels high.The process for converting PDFs and images to text is really easy, but good results depend on good source material, so here are some basic guidelines to follow: I’ve highlighted the text elements that we need to save in the Google Sheet and the RegEx pattern that will help us extract the required information.Basic Guidelines to Follow for Best Results Now that we have the text content of the PDF file, we can use RegEx to extract the information we need. Please ensure the Advanced Drive API as describes in this tutorial.
Convert PDF to TextĪssuming that the PDF files is already in our Google Drive, we’ll write a little function that will convert the PDF file to text.
We can then use RegEx to parse this text file and write the extracted information into a Google Sheet. Our PDF extractor script will read the file from Google Drive and use Google Drive API to convert to a text file. Here’s a sample PDF invoice that we’ll use in this example. These PDF invoices have to be parsed and specific information, like the invoice number, the invoice date and the buyer’s email address, needs to be extracted and saved into a Google Spreadsheet. You can also click the OCR Area button to select and OCR specific texts that you. This tutorial explains how you can parse and extract text elements from invoices, expense receipts and other PDF documents with the help of Apps Script.Īn external accounting system generates paper receipts for its customers which are then scanned as PDF files and uploaded to a folder in Google Drive. After adding the PDF file successfully, tap the Tools tab and then choose OCR.