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Extract text with OCR on PAD only works sometimes

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Posted on by Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee

Hi! I created a flow to extract text from PDF invoices from a particular energy company.

I used regex to locate the text from the extracted text to get my outputs.

However, the issue I faced is that the "Extract text from PDF" does not always work. For some invoices, the extracted text variable is empty. It only manages to pick up some months' invoices.

For context, these are structured PDFs and is from the same company every month.

Please help! 😞

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Power Automate Desktop

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CU16071609-1 6,255 Moderator on at

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@junjie
Could you kindly provide screenshots of your Power Automate Desktop flow, accompanied by a sample PDF invoice file, and elaborate on the specific challenges you're encountering?

This additional context will enable community contributors to offer more targeted assistance.

Thanks,
Deenuji Loganathan 👩‍💻
Automation Evangelist 🤖
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VishnuReddy1997 2,666 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @junjie ,

Along with the flow screenshot and PDFS . Can you please confirm whether all the PDFs are scanned one or editable one.

The one which is giving empty may be the scanned pdf I guess.

(Note:- if you got your solution you can mark as solution and gives kudos)

Thanks & Regards
Vishnu Reddy

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @VishnuReddy1997 , my PDFs are not scanned or editable, they are invoices from an electricity provider. the format is the same, it is just that some invoices can be read while some others cannot be read and extracted

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VishnuReddy1997 2,666 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @junjie ,

Can you share one pdf that is extracted and one that is not extracted.

(Note:- if you got your solution you can mark as solution and gives kudos)

Thanks & Regards
Vishnu Reddy

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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The invoices might be protected. Please simply try to select some text manually in the PDF and see if you are allowed to copy it out. If you cannot do that, it means it's been protected and that will be the reason why PAD cannot extract the text.

Also, please confirm whether you really are using OCR actions. You mentioned OCR in the title of the topic, but based on your messages, it seems like you're using the normal Extract text from PDF action that does not use OCR.

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