This guide will walk you through setting up your first mailbox in Parseur, helping you extract text from emails and PDFs efficiently. We recommend following along to create your mailbox as you go through this tutorial.
Prerequisite
Before you start, make sure you have a Parseur account. If not, sign up for free!
Short on Time?
Watch this 24-second video to quickly understand how Parseur works.
Navigating the Parseur Home Screen
Left Menu Overview
In the left menu, you’ll find:
Parseur Logo: Click the logo from any page to return to the home screen.
Menu Toggle: Use the chevrons (
<<) next to the logo to collapse or expand the left menu.New Mailbox: Click here to create a new mailbox. This is the page you’re on after confirming your account.
Account Settings: Access and update your account information.
Change Plan: View and modify your current subscription.
What’s New: Discover the latest features, improvements, and bug fixes.
Support Center: Visit our help site (where you are now).
Contact Us: Open the chat box to send us a message.
At the bottom of the menu, you’ll see your name, current plan, and current credit usage.
Click your name to log out, access status and feedback pages, or switch accounts (if you have more than one).
Chat box
At the bottom right of your screen, you’ll find the chat box. You can use it to ask our AI agent any questions you have about Parseur.
Our AI agent is available 24/7 and knows Parseur inside out. If the AI is unable to assist, you’ll have the option to connect with a human agent from our support team.
Let's get started!
Step 1: Choose the Mailbox Creation Mode
You have three options for creating a mailbox:
AI-Assisted Mailbox Creation (recommended): Our AI will analyze the first document you upload to determine the best mailbox type. Parseur includes numerous predefined mailbox types, each with a default set of fields to extract.
Manual Mailbox Creation: Manually select the mailbox type. You can also choose “Other” to create a custom mailbox from scratch with your own set of fields.
Full Text Content Mailbox: Use this if you only need to extract the full content from a document, along with some metadata, without extracting structured data. Selecting this option will present an additional screen to choose the metadata you want to extract.
Let’s go with AI-assisted mailbox creation. Parseur will generate a new mailbox with a random name and email address for sending documents. You can change this name and address later in your mailbox settings.
Step 2: Send your first document
You can send your first document to Parseur in two ways:
Option 1: Send via Email
Click Copy address to clipboard and forward your email to the provided address.
Wait for Parseur to receive the email (usually within seconds). You can attach PDFs and spreadsheets to your emails, which will appear as separate documents.
Pro Tip: For optimal results, set up auto-forward rules to automatically send emails to Parseur. (More details at the end of the article.)
Option 2: Upload Directly from the App
Drag and drop your document onto the page or click the gray area to open the file browser.
Select the file(s) you want to upload. You can upload multiple files at once.
Pro Tip: You can drag and drop files from any page within a mailbox to upload them.
Step 3: Let Parseur Identify and Process Your Document
Once Parseur receives your document, the page will automatically update.
If Parseur recognizes an existing mailbox type, it will use the fields from that type. The mailbox type will be displayed in brackets next to the mailbox name in the top navigation breadcrumbs (e.g., “Invoices”).
If no matching mailbox type is found, Parseur will try to identify fields to extract. If it cannot identify any data, you’ll be prompted to create fields manually.
After the fields are detected, Parseur will process your document.
Click on the document’s name to view it along with the extracted data.
Next Steps:
Modify Fields: Click on the Fields tab in the document view page to add, remove, or rename fields. You can also access the field list via the Fields section in the left menu.
Create Template: If you prefer to use Parseur’s template engine instead of the AI engine, click Create template to define how data should be extracted.
Reprocess Document: If you make changes to fields or create a template, click Reprocess to update the parsed result.
Download/Export: Finally, click the Download/Export menu section to download your parsed data.
Congratulations! You’ve successfully created your first mailbox and parsed your first document! 🚀
Frequently Asked Questions
How many mailboxes can I create?
There are no limits. You can create as many mailboxes as you need in any plan.
What’s the difference between the AI engine and the template engine? Which should I choose?
By default, Parseur uses the AI engine to extract data. The AI engine automatically understands your document layout and extracts the data based on field names. However, it may sometimes struggle with accuracy.
Templates offer a more reliable and accurate way to extract data, especially if you have documents with consistent layouts. You will need to create a template for each layout.
For more details, check out our article on AI vs Template Parsing: Pros and Cons.
Can I use AI and templates together in a mailbox?
Yes! You can use both AI and templates together in a mailbox. When a document is received, Parseur will first try to find a matching template. If it doesn’t find one, it will automatically use the AI engine to extract the data.
How many templates can I create in a mailbox?
There are no limits. You can create as many templates as you have layouts. Parseur will automatically select the appropriate template each time a new document is received.
How to create a template?
Select the Document: Choose the document you want to base your template on.
Create the Template:
From the Document View Page: click the + button in the top-right corner.
From the Document List Page: hover over the document and click the + New Template button.
What’s next?
Create your first OCR template (for PDFs)
Create your first Text template (for emails and other HTML or text documents)