PDF to Text
Pull the readable text out of a PDF, page by page. Copy it to the clipboard or save it as a plain text file. The file is processed on your device and never uploaded.
Runs in your browser. Your files are never uploaded.
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How to use PDF to Text
- Choose a PDF file.
- Press Extract text and wait while each page is read.
- Choose whether to add a Page N heading before each page.
- Press Copy, or download the result as a .txt file.
What this tool does
Many PDFs contain a real text layer, meaning the words are stored as characters rather than as a picture. That layer is what a viewer uses when you search or select text. This tool reads that layer with the pdf.js library and assembles it into plain text, one page after another, so you can reuse the words elsewhere: in a document, an email, a spreadsheet, a translation tool or a notes app.
Getting the best result
Documents exported from word processors, web pages and reporting tools usually extract cleanly. Single-column text such as articles, contracts and ebooks tends to come out in the right order. Headers, footers and page numbers are text too, so they will appear on each page and may need removing. Page headings are optional; turn them off when you want one continuous block of text.
- Use page headings to find where each page begins.
- Check numbers and special symbols, which can be encoded unusually in some PDFs.
- For tables, paste the text into a spreadsheet and clean it there.
- If only some pages are empty, those pages are probably scans.
Limits and privacy
The tool cannot read text inside scanned images, handwriting or photographs, and it does not perform OCR. Some PDFs use custom fonts without proper text mapping, which can produce garbled or missing characters even though the page looks fine. Password-protected files cannot be opened.
All extraction happens inside your browser tab. The file is not uploaded, and the text shown on screen disappears when you close or reload the page.
Why use this pdf to text tool
- Page-by-page extraction. Text is read in order from every page, with optional page headings.
- Copy or download. One click copies everything, or saves it as a UTF-8 text file.
- Scan detection. Tells you when pages contain no text layer, which usually means they are scanned images.
- Nothing uploaded. Extraction uses pdf.js in your browser, so private documents stay private.
Frequently asked questions
Why did I get no text from my PDF?
Scanned documents and photographed pages are stored as pictures, with no text inside. This tool reads the text layer that a PDF contains, so it finds nothing in those files. To turn pictures of text into real text you need OCR, optical character recognition, which this tool does not provide.
Why is the layout or order sometimes odd?
A PDF stores positioned fragments of text, not paragraphs. The tool joins them in the order the file lists them, which usually matches reading order but can scramble multi-column pages, tables or text added by design software. Expect to tidy up tables and columns by hand.
Does it keep formatting?
No. The output is plain text: no fonts, bold, colours, images or tables. Line breaks follow the line ends recorded in the PDF, and extra blank lines are collapsed.
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