Extract text and structured data

with Amazon Textract

In this tutorial, you learn how to use Amazon Textract to extract text and structured data from a document.

Amazon Textract is a fully managed machine learning service that automatically extracts text and data from scanned documents that goes beyond simple optical character recognition (OCR) to identify, understand, and extract data from forms and tables. Many companies today extract data from scanned documents, such as PDFs, tables and forms, through manual data entry (that is slow, expensive and prone to errors), or through simple OCR software that requires manual configuration which needs to be updated each time the form changes to be usable. To overcome these manual processes, Textract uses machine learning to instantly read and process any type of document, accurately extracting text, forms, tables and, other data without the need for any manual effort or custom code.

In this tutorial, you learn how to:

Sign in to Amazon Textract
Extract raw text, forms, and table cells from a sample document
Download the results
Learn about human review

This tutorial requires an AWS Account. If you don’t have an AWS Account, sign up for AWS. The resources you create in this tutorial are AWS Free Tier eligible.

About this Tutorial
Time	10 minutes
Cost	AWS Free Tier eligible
Use Case	Machine Learning
Products	Amazon Textract
Audience	Developer
Level	Beginner
Last Updated	September 25, 2020

Step 1. Sign in to Amazon Textract

The resources created and used in this tutorial are AWS Free Tier eligible.

a. Sign in to the AWS Management Console. Or, if you do not have an AWS Account, sign up for AWS.

Already have an account? Sign in

b. Open the Amazon Textract console and choose Try Amazon Textract.

Amazon Textract opens with a sample document for analysis.

Note: If you want to upload your own document to extract entities, choose Upload document. The supported document types are PNG, JPEG, and PDF format.

Step 2. Extract raw text from a document

Complete the following steps to extract raw text from the built-in sample document using Amazon Textract.

Note: For more information, see Analyzing Text in the Amazon Textract documentation.

a. In the right panel of the Analyze document screen, choose Raw text to extract raw text (OCR) output from the built-in sample document.

b. In the right pane, choose Words to show the extracted words from the document.

c. In the right pane, select a word. The corresponding word is highlighted in the sample document in the left pane. This leverages the bounding box feature of Amazon Textract.

d. In the right pane, choose Lines to show the extracted lines from the document.

e. In the right pane, select a line. The corresponding line is highlighted in the sample document in the left pane. This leverages the bounding box feature of Amazon Textract.

Step 3. Extract form data from a sample document

Complete the following steps to extract form (key-value) data from the built-in sample document using Amazon Textract.

Note: For more information, see Form Data (Key-Value Pairs) in the Amazon Textract documentation.

a. In the right pane of the Analyze document screen, choose Forms to extract form (key-value) output from the sample document.

b. In the right pane, select a key-value. The corresponding element is highlighted in the sample document in the left pane. This leverages the bounding box feature of Amazon Textract to show the placement of the key-value element in the sample document.

Step 4. Extract table data from a sample document

Complete the following steps to extract table data from the built-in sample document using Amazon Textract.

Note: For more information, see Tables in the Amazon Textract documentation.

a. In the right pane of the Analyze document screen, choose Tables to extract table output from the sample document.

b. In the right pane, select a cell. The corresponding cell is highlighted in the sample document in the left pane. This leverages the bounding box feature of Amazon Textract to show the placement of the cell in the sample document.

Step 5. Download results from Amazon Textract

You can download results and choose various formats to view the results, including raw JSON, text, and CSV files for forms and tables.

Complete the following steps to download results from Amazon Textract.

Note: For more information, see Amazon Textract.

In the right pane of the Analyze document screen, choose Download results.

The results are downloaded as a zip file. You can choose various formats, including raw JSON, text, and CSV files for forms and tables. The following image is sample output of all key-value extracted from the document.

Step 6. Learn about human review

Amazon Textract is directly integrated with Amazon Augmented AI (Amazon A2I) so you can easily implement human review of text extracted from documents.

Note: For more information, see Amazon Augmented AI with Amazon Textract.

In the right pane of the Analyze document screen, choose Human review to learn more about Amazon Augmented AI.

When done, simply sign out of the Amazon Textract console to end this tutorial.

Congratulations

You have learned how to use the console to extract raw text, table, and forms from scanned documents using Amazon Textract.

Was this tutorial helpful?

Feedback

Recommended next steps

Learn more

Learn more about Amazon Textract by reading the Amazon Textract Developer Guide.

Explore other machine learning services tutorials

Explore additional machine learning services tutorials and hands-on projects on the Getting Started Resource Center.