In a method for acquiring data from a machine-readable document for assignment to fields of a database, individual data are extracted substantially automatically from the document and entered into the corresponding database fields. If data cannot be extracted from the document with a desired degree of reliability for one or more particular database fields, then the steps are executed of displaying the document onto the display screen, displaying on the display screen the at least one or more database fields for which the data cannot be extracted with the desired degree of reliability, and executing a proposal routine with which string sections in the vicinity of a pointer movable by a user on the display screen are selected, marked, and proposed for extraction.