PDF to Text
Extract readable text from PDF files for copy, export, or reuse.
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Quick Tip
Select the PDF you want to read.
About This Tool
Why use PDF to Text?
Extract the plain text of a PDF so you can search it, quote it or paste it somewhere else. Every page is read with pdf.js and the text comes back in reading order, page by page, ready to copy in one click or save as a .txt file.
Copying out of a PDF reader usually produces broken line breaks, missing spaces and text pulled out of order, because the reader copies what is selected rather than what is structured. Reading the text layer directly avoids that, which matters when you are feeding the content into a word counter, a translator, a language model or a script.
Key Benefits
Clean reading order
Text is pulled from the PDF's own text layer, so it comes out in order instead of the jumble a copy-paste from a reader often gives.
Copy or download
Take the whole document to the clipboard in one click, or save it as a .txt file for a script or an editor.
Processed in the browser
The PDF is never uploaded, so confidential documents can be read without handing them to a third party.
How to use PDF to Text
- 1
Select the PDF you want to read.
- 2
Extract the text; each page is processed in turn.
- 3
Review the result in the preview panel.
- 4
Copy it to the clipboard or download it as a .txt file.
Best use cases
Quote a passage from a report without retyping it.
Get a PDF's word count by pasting the text into a counter.
Feed a document into a translation tool or a language model.
Make an unsearchable PDF's content searchable in a text editor.
PDF to Text FAQs
Why does my PDF produce no text?
It is a scan. A scanned page is a photograph with no text layer, so there is nothing to extract. OCR software can add one; after that, extraction works normally.
Does it keep the formatting?
No, and that is the point. You get the plain words without fonts, columns or styling, which is what you want before pasting into another tool.
Will tables come out readable?
Tables lose their column structure in plain text. If you need the rows and columns, use the PDF to Excel tool instead.
Is there a file size limit?
No fixed limit, but the document is processed in memory, so very large files take longer and depend on your browser's available memory.
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