Annotate any PDF on an interactive canvas and extract clean, structured data — without touching a line of code.
Description
Extracts any data you need from PDF documents using a visual annotation workflow. You highlight the areas of interest directly on the document, optionally place column guides, and click Convert. The node does the rest and sends a clean, structured table to your workflow.
Best For
PDFs exported from accounting software, ERP systems, or government portals
Multi-page reports — extract any data you need from any page, whether it is a formal table or a structured layout with names, IDs, amounts, or any other fields
Any document format — the app adapts to your data regardless of how it is laid out on the page
Recurring reports with the same layout — annotate once, reuse every time
How to Use
1Open your PDF
Click the Open File button in the toolbar to load your PDF. Use the page controls in the toolbar to move between pages.
2Highlight the data you want to extract
Select the Rectangle tool in the toolbar. Click and drag over any area of the document that contains the data you are interested in — this tells the node where to look. You can draw multiple areas and assign each a different color. Each color acts as a label you can use later to filter and work with specific sections independently in other nodes such as Filter Builder.
3Add column guides (optional)
Select the Guide tool and click to place vertical lines where you want column boundaries to be. This is optional — if you skip it, the node estimates column positions automatically. It does this independently for each page, so it adapts even when column widths vary.
4Click Convert
Click the Convert button. The node processes your highlighted areas and sends a structured table to the output. Connect it to a Data Table to review your results, or pipe it directly to the next step in your workflow.
Toolbar Reference
Hand Tool
When toggled — click and drag anywhere on the canvas to pan across the document.
Selection Tool
Click an existing annotation to select, reposition, or resize it.
Page Navigation
Step through pages. The input shows your current page out of the total — you can also type a page number directly.
Keyboard Shortcuts
H
Toggle Hand tool
V
Toggle Selection tool
G
Toggle Guide tool (column delimiter)
Ctrl↵ Enter
Convert
CtrlO
Open PDF
Ctrl+
Zoom in
Ctrl−
Zoom out
Ctrl0
Fit page to window
CtrlScroll ↑
Zoom in
CtrlScroll ↓
Zoom out
Tips & Notes
Reuse your annotations
If you receive the same report layout every month, save the workflow. Your annotations are stored — just swap the PDF file and click Convert again.
Use colors to filter sections later
Each highlighted area gets a color. In downstream nodes like Filter, you can use these colors to work with specific sections of the extracted data independently.
Column alignment issues
If columns appear merged in the output, try adding column guides between them. If rows are merged, your highlighted area may be too tall — trim it to cover only the rows you need.
Image-only PDFs produce no output
If you open a scanned document and get empty results, the file has no text layer. Run it through OCR software first, then open it in this node.
Open your PDF
Highlight the data you want to extract
Add column guides (optional)
Click Convert
