How to Extract Text from a Scanned PDF Using Make and PDF.co

Step 1: Add the Google Drive Trigger

Create a new scenario in Make and add Google Drive as the first module.

Select Watch Files in a Folder, connect your Google Drive account, and choose the folder containing the scanned PDFs. This module will start the scenario whenever a new file is added.

Run the module once and select a sample scanned PDF.

Step 2: Download the PDF

Add another Google Drive module and select Download a File.

Map the File ID from the trigger. This downloads the file data so it can be sent to PDF.co.

Step 3: Add the PDF.co Module

Add PDF.co and select Convert from PDF. Connect your PDF.co account and configure the module:

• Import Options: Select Upload a File.
• Data: Map the file data from the Google Drive download module.
• Output File Name: Enter a name such as extracted-text.txt.
• Convert Type: Select PDF to Text or Plain Text.
• Pages: Leave blank to process every page, or specify zero-based page indexes such as 0-2.
• OCR Language: Select the language used in the document, such as English.
• Output: Choose an inline or JSON output when the extracted text will be mapped into another module. Choose a downloadable file when the text should be saved as a .txt file.

See the PDF to Text documentation for additional OCR, language, page-range, and extraction options.

Step 4: Test the Scenario

Click Run once, then add a scanned PDF to the selected Google Drive folder.

Open the PDF.co module’s output and confirm that the document text was extracted successfully. You can map this text into another module to save it, send it by email, analyze it, or add it to a database.

Step 5: Activate the Scenario

Set the scenario’s schedule and activate it. Make will now send each new scanned PDF in the selected folder to PDF.co for automatic OCR and text extraction.