How to create and extract data from PDFs with Zapier

When I was a freelance writer, I clicked "Export to PDF" an impressive number of times per day—to generate invoices, or to share assets with formatting and images preserved—and the monotony got old fast. Your team probably knows the feeling if they regularly have to deal with PDFs, whether they're converting files to the universal file format, extracting data, or doing other PDF-related tasks.

The good news? With Zapier, you can automate those repetitive workflows. In this post, I'll show you how with Zaps (that's what we call automated workflows) that let you parse, create, fill, and use PDFs on autopilot.

Skip ahead

• Convert files to PDFs automatically

• Generate PDFs from structured data

• Create and fill PDFs

• Extract text from your PDFs

• Use AI to summarize and repurpose text

• Use webhooks to connect almost any app to your PDF tool

Convert files to PDFs automatically

Anything uncreative task you do two or more times per day is worth automating. So if you're still manually converting every file that falls in your lap into a PDF, you’re wasting precious time, especially if the apps you use don't let you batch-convert. No matter whether your files come through a cloud storage app or by email, any time you receive a new file, you can automatically send it to PDF.co to convert it, then save it to your storage app.

If various file extensions enter your Google Drive, and you just want to store the PDF, Zapier can help you keep your drive clean. Just swap your final upload event with a Replace File action even to overwrite the original.

Generate PDFs from structured data

You may want to turn more than just files into PDFs. What if you have structured data—like a form submission, database record, or an entire email—that you want rendered as a PDF? Connecting PDF.co to Zapier gives you that option as well.

For example, say every time someone submits a form, you need a clean PDF record of that submission for your files. Or maybe when a new row is added to a spreadsheet, you want a formatted PDF generated and dropped into a shared folder. You can then send that PDF directly to someone—like a client confirmation or an internal receipt—without any manual steps in between. Give it a whirl with the templates below.

Create and fill PDFs

Filling PDF forms is a tedious—but often inescapable—part of life, whether your job is client-facing or not. Maybe your law firm or accounting service uses forms to collect customer information, which you then input into a fillable PDF. Or maybe you need to populate a report based on data from your spreadsheet or database tool.

If you fill out the same PDF form repeatedly, it's worth setting up an automated workflow to pull information from other sources and fill PDF fields instantly. Save yourself time and avoid typos, all in one go.

Extract text from your PDFs

Too often, tracking down the information you need is a headache. Instead of scrolling through pages of text or searching your email inbox for that important information, why not create your own Zapier PDF parser? 

Whenever a new file is detected in your cloud storage service or email inbox, these Zaps will automatically upload them to Docparser or PDF.co. These tools can then extract text from PDFs and other documents based on your specifications. Just set up parsing rules for whatever types of documents you need, from invoices to contracts and beyond. Then, you'll get the information you need from each file, neatly formatted, in a few seconds.

Use AI to summarize and repurpose text

Large language models can help you do more with your PDFs. For example, maybe you want to convert new Dropbox files to PDFs and save the new version—but you don't want to stop there. With AI, you can analyze the document for key details and then get a summary delivered straight to your inbox. This is great for teams that process a high volume of contracts, reports, or other documents and need quick takeaways without reading every page.

You can also adapt this workflow to handle incoming email attachments, filtering only for files that aren't already PDFs. If your team communicates more by chat than email, swap the last step for a Slack channel message so the AI-generated insights land right where your team is already working.

Use webhooks to connect almost any app to your PDF tool

If the app you want to use with a document management tool doesn't integrate with Zapier (yet), you can use webhooks instead. 

A webhook is a message sent from one app to another based on a trigger event—in this case, maybe it's a new message or form submission. Or maybe you want to use the PDF tool as your trigger app, like by sending parsed documents from Parsio to your bespoke database app. As long as your app supports webhooks, you can use these templates to get started building your own custom workflow in either direction.

Use Zapier to create PDFs and streamline your document management  

Keeping your documents organized and easily accessible could be its own full-time job. Converting file formats, populating forms, and parsing documents for important information are all monotonous—but crucial—tasks. Thankfully, you can pair Zapier with a PDF tool to automate some of that busywork, reducing human error while freeing up time you could spend actually putting those documents to use.

And that's just the start of what you can do with document management tools and Zapier. What will you automate first?

This article was originally written in October 2024 by Nicole Replogle. It was most recently updated in March 2026.