# Write extraction guidance the AI can follow

The per-field instructions that turn wrong or blank extractions into right ones — where the AI Extraction Guidance box lives, what good guidance sounds like, and the format guide and value lists that back it up.

Product: paige · Audience: catalog-administrator · Time: 20 minutes · Last verified: 2026-09-05

Canonical: https://help.ademero.com/paige/document-processing/write-extraction-guidance-the-ai-can-follow

**At the end of this guide, the fields Paige keeps getting wrong have instructions that fix them — written the way the AI actually uses them: context and location, not just wishes.**

## Where the guidance lives

1. Open **Settings** (the gear at the bottom of the left menu — administrators only) and pick the scan job.

2. Choose **Document Types**, open the document type, and select the field in the **Fields** list.

3. Expand **Advanced Settings**. The box is **AI Extraction Guidance** — as its tooltip says, this "goes beyond format and focuses on context and location."

*[Screenshot: The document type editor with a field selected and AI Extraction Guidance expanded under Advanced Settings]*

## What good guidance sounds like

The placeholder gives the pattern: *"This field is always located below the company logo"* or *"The value should never exceed $100."* Three ingredients, in the field's own words:

- **Where it is** on the page — position, nearby labels, which box on a form
- **What it looks like** — and what it is *not*, naming the values it gets confused with
- **Rules a human checker would apply** — ranges, relationships to other fields

Here's the shape at full strength, from a professionally-written example for a W-2's employer name:

> "It is typically located in Box 'c' near the top of the form and is labeled as 'Employer's name.' … Focus on the name explicitly associated with the entity issuing the W2, avoiding confusion with the employee's name or other fields."

Location, label, and the specific confusion to avoid — that's the recipe. Guidance like "extract the correct value" adds nothing; guidance like "the *ship-to* address in the upper right, never the billing address beside it" fixes real mistakes.

## The two supporting tools in the same panel

- **Custom Data Format Guide** (appears when you pick the custom option under the field's **Data Format**): describe the expected shape in words — the tooltip is explicit that this is "not a rigid mask, but a guide for AI."
- **Force Selection from Embedded List**: upload a text, CSV, or XML file of valid values, and extracted values are matched against it — the strongest fix for fields with a known universe (your vendor list, your GL codes). Save the document type before uploading the list; **Replace List** and **Remove List** manage it afterward.

## Iterate like it's training — because it is

1. Change one field's guidance.
2. Run a few documents that previously extracted wrong.
3. Check the results, sharpen the wording, repeat.

**Success check:** the previously-wrong documents now extract correctly *and* a couple of previously-right ones still do — guidance that fixes one case by breaking another needs its "what it is not" clause tightened.

## When guidance isn't the problem

Blank or wrong values sometimes come from earlier in the pipeline. If *every* field on a document is wrong, the document was probably classified as the wrong type — that's a classification problem, fixed in [Teach Paige to identify document types](/paige/document-processing/teach-paige-to-identify-document-types). If a value from a *different* document appears, pages were grouped into the wrong document — that's [separation](/paige/document-processing/paige-document-separation). [Paige extracted a blank or wrong field](/paige/document-processing/paige-extracted-blank-or-wrong-field) walks the full diagnosis order before you over-tune guidance.

## What's next

- [Teach Paige to identify document types](https://help.ademero.com/paige/document-processing/teach-paige-to-identify-document-types)
- [Paige extracted a blank or wrong field](https://help.ademero.com/paige/document-processing/paige-extracted-blank-or-wrong-field)
- [Set up scan jobs](https://help.ademero.com/paige/document-processing/set-up-scan-jobs)