PDF to Text

Add one or more PDFs to extract their plain text content.

Click to choose PDFs or drag & drop them here

Text is extracted page by page and saved as a .txt file per PDF. This works on PDFs with real (selectable) text; scanned/image-only PDFs need OCR, which this tool doesn't do.

Extract readable text from PDF files into plain text for copying, searching, editing or further processing. The PDF to Text tool is designed for PDFs that contain an actual text layer.

What is PDF to Text?

PDF to Text reads the text information available in PDF pages and produces a plain-text representation. It is different from PDF-to-image conversion because the goal here is text extraction rather than visual rendering.

How to extract text from a PDF

  1. Select the PDF file or files.
  2. Start the text extraction process.
  3. Review the extracted text.
  4. Save or download the resulting text output.

Text PDFs and scanned PDFs

A digitally generated PDF with selectable text is generally more suitable for direct extraction. A scanned page that contains only an image may not contain a text layer, so a simple text extractor cannot automatically read it without OCR.

Common uses for extracted PDF text

Plain text can be useful for searching, copying notes, preparing summaries, moving content into another application or checking the text layer of a document.

PDF to Text FAQ

Can I extract text from any PDF?

The tool works with text available in the PDF's text layer. Image-only scans may require OCR instead.

Will the extracted text keep the exact PDF layout?

Plain text extraction focuses on readable text, not pixel-perfect page layout.

Is PDF to Text the same as OCR?

No. OCR is used to recognize text inside images; this tool extracts text already represented as PDF text.

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