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The Document Definition Wizard creates a new Document Definition or a document set from already enabled Document Definitions. The first step depends on the type of documents you choose. The remaining steps are the same for every type.

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Document types

The wizard supports four types of documents.

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Create a Document Definition with the wizard

1

Start the wizard

In the main menu, select Project → Document Definitions, and then click New.
2

Select the document type and complete its first step

Select the type of documents to process, complete the first step for that type, and click Next. The first step depends on the type:
  • Forms – Select an image obtained by scanning a blank form; you indicate the position of each field on this image. Use a high-quality image with no distortions such as skews or shifts. For color forms, do not apply color filters when scanning the blank form, so that the background stays intact. Apply background-removal filters later, when scanning filled-out forms. If your document has several pages, load the first page and follow Create Document Definitions for multipage documents to add the rest.
  • Semi-structured or unstructured documents – Select a reference image (optional if you are creating a FlexiLayout). To use a FlexiLayout created in ABBYY FlexiLayout Studio, select the Load FlexiLayout option and specify the path to the FlexiLayout file. A FlexiLayout can be created automatically if the Allow field location training option is selected. For more information, see Create a Document Definition based on a flexible description.
  • Documents that do not require automatic data extraction – Select the source of the image used for the document sample (optional).
  • Document set – From the list of all documents available in the project, select the documents that belong to the set. If required, add a summary section to group the main fields of the set in one section, so that they can all be verified on the same data form.
3

Specify the main properties and language

  1. Enter a name and description for the Document Definition.
  2. Select the language of your documents. By default, the drop-down list shows only the languages for which dictionaries are provided. To see all languages, select Show all languages. Specify the correct language, because the wrong language causes recognition errors, and avoid specifying more languages than you need, because too many can slow processing. Languages with the ICR abbreviation recognize handwritten, hand-printed, and machine-printed text. If you do not know the language in advance, specify several candidate languages, and FlexiCapture selects the appropriate one.
  3. Set the text type. It is used by default, but you can change it for any field later, for example if different fields contain text in different languages.
  4. To reuse the recognition settings defined for the batch type, select Use recognition settings from batch type. If you disable this synchronization, Document Definition matching may be slower.
  5. Click Next.
4

Choose the field types to detect automatically (forms only)

Specify the types of fields to detect automatically. ABBYY FlexiCapture easily finds specially marked text entry fields and checkmarks inside boxes. If the text entry fields on your form have no special marking, or there are no boxes for checkmarks next to the explanatory text, indicate their possible positions manually. It always attempts to detect anchors on forms.
5

Finish the wizard

Click Finish. The Document Definition Editor opens. For forms, mark up the fields and static elements on the page image and define their properties.