Extract text from a PDF
Pull all the text out of a PDF as plain text, ready to copy or download as a txt file.
Drop a PDF here, or click to choose one
Processed right in your browser, never uploaded to any server
What is Extract text from a PDF?
Getting text out of a PDF is useful when you want to quote a passage elsewhere, count the words, or simply search a long document quickly. Selecting and copying in a PDF reader often produces a mess on multi-column layouts; this tool reads the text layer directly, so the order holds together.
One thing to understand first: there are two very different kinds of PDF. The first is exported by software and carries a real text layer, and from those you get everything. The second is a scan, where each page is only a photograph of paper with no text inside at all. For the second kind every extraction tool returns nothing, and this one says so plainly rather than letting you think you did something wrong.
Two small options are worth attention. Keeping line breaks suits poetry, contracts and tables, where where a line ends carries meaning. Turning it off makes each page one flowing paragraph, which reads better for prose and pastes better into other software.
Page markers insert a labelled line between pages, which helps when you need to trace something back to the original document.
How to use
- Choose a PDF file.
- Turn line breaks on or off depending on the kind of document.
- Turn on page markers if you need to trace text back to the original.
- Press extract.
- Copy the result directly, or download it as a txt file.
Frequently asked questions
Why is the result empty?
Almost certainly because this is a scan: each page is just an image with no text inside to extract. Getting text out would need optical character recognition, which requires a model of tens of megabytes and so is not done here in the browser.
Why is the order jumbled in multi-column documents?
Because a PDF stores no notion of columns, only the position of each run of text on the page. The tool reads in the order recorded in the file, and that order is decided by whatever created it. Complex layouts sometimes need manual reordering.
Does it handle accented and non-Latin text?
Yes, provided the file uses standard fonts and Unicode, which covers almost everything made today. A few very old files use private encodings and can come out garbled, which is a property of the file rather than the tool.
Is my file uploaded anywhere?
No. The reading is done by the browser own PDF engine, on your machine. You can verify it by disconnecting from the internet once the page has loaded, and the tool keeps working.