Skip to main content
For documents like bills, payment orders, or invoices, you cannot use an ordinary Document Definition with fixed field locations. The location, size, and number of fields may vary from document to document, so a fixed Document Definition cannot be applied uniformly to all of them. For these documents, a Document Definition must include a special logical description called a FlexiLayout, which helps ABBYY FlexiCapture locate the necessary fields based on keywords and the position of the fields relative to one another. Create FlexiLayouts in ABBYY FlexiLayout Studio, which ships together with ABBYY FlexiCapture. For more information, see the ABBYY FlexiLayout Studio documentation. After you create a FlexiLayout, export it to an *.afl file, and then attach it to your Document Definition in ABBYY FlexiCapture. A FlexiLayout can apply to the entire Document Definition or to one of its sections, and it may have multiple pages.
Besides one main FlexiLayout, you can create any number of additional FlexiLayouts for a document. FlexiCapture applies the main FlexiLayout first, and then each of the additional FlexiLayouts in turn. If the names and types of the fields are identical in the main and additional FlexiLayouts, their fields are merged. If the names are identical but the types differ, the additional FlexiLayouts fail to load and an error message is displayed.

​
Attach a FlexiLayout

You can attach a FlexiLayout when you create a Document Definition. In the second step of the Document Definition Wizard, add the document image, select the Load FlexiLayout option, and enter the path to the *.afl file that contains the FlexiLayout. You can also attach a FlexiLayout from the Document Definition editor, using the properties dialog box of the Document Definition section.
1

Open the section properties

Select a document section. If the document consists of a single section, click the Pages tab in the Document Structure window and select the name of the section. Right-click and select Properties from the shortcut menu.
2

Open the FlexiLayout tab

Click the FlexiLayout tab.
3

Load the FlexiLayout file

Click Load, and then select the required *.afl file that contains the FlexiLayout.
After you attach a FlexiLayout, the layout of the fields is displayed on the image. Configure field properties as you do for a fixed Document Definition. Specify recognition, verification, and export properties, and set the required rules.

​
Update a FlexiLayout

1

Open the Update FlexiLayouts dialog box

Click Tools → Update FlexiLayouts.
2

Update the FlexiLayouts

In the dialog box that opens, specify the paths to the FlexiLayouts and click Update.
When you import a FlexiLayout with text files that contain possible field values, FlexiCapture uses the relative paths defined when the FlexiLayout was created. The relative paths are relative to the project file. To edit these files, save the project locally (click Project → Export Project), edit the files, and update the project on the server (click Project → Update Project).