Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

Practicing flows and trying to extract data from a PDF document of property information.

I am unable to find the PDF invoice column headings in the flow list of dynamic content.

PDF Invoice (The column headers are in bold) -

I've replicated the column headings that I want in my output in the flow below. My issue, none of the heading in the invoice appear in the flow choices of dynamic
content. How do I get the PDF column headers to appear in the list of dynamic content, or otherwise identify which content item to associate with my output
column heading?

Categories:

Building flows

Hi Phineas,

Thank your for choosing Power Platform Community.

This issue typically occurs because Power Automate doesn’t automatically recognize formatted elements in a PDF, such as bold column headers. Instead, it extracts raw text without structural data.

Here’s how you can approach solving it:

Possible Solutions:

Use AI Builder for PDF Extraction

AI Builder's Form Processing Model allows you to define key fields in a document, training it to recognize specific data points such as column headers.

You can upload sample invoices to train the model, so it recognizes your headings consistently.

Extract Text and Use Regular Expressions (RegEx)

If using Extract text from PDF in Power Automate, parse the text output manually.

Apply RegEx to identify headers based on expected formatting (e.g., headers that are always in uppercase or follow specific patterns).

Convert the PDF to Another Format First

If possible, convert the PDF to Excel or CSV via Power Automate or manual conversion.

Extract column data directly from structured files rather than raw PDFs.

Verify PDF Data Extraction Source

Sometimes, headers may not be appearing because of document formatting issues (e.g., if the PDF is scanned, it might be treated as an image).

Try opening the document in Adobe Acrobat or another editor to check whether the text can be copied and pasted.

If any of these fixes the issue, please mark as resolved to help others with find it.

Happy to help
Robu1
SuperUser| Moderator