PDF to Text
Pull the text out of one or more PDFs — copy it straight from the box or download a .txt file per document.
Options
About this tool
Quoting a paragraph from a paper, feeding a contract into a translator, counting the words in a thesis — all of it starts with getting the text out of the PDF, and select-all-copy from a viewer gives you broken lines and jumbled columns. This free PDF to text converter reads the document's text layer page by page with the open-source pdf.js engine, keeps the reading order, turns line changes into real line breaks and larger gaps into paragraph breaks, and optionally marks each page with a --- Page N --- separator so you can find a passage in the original again.
Drop one PDF or a whole batch: each file is processed in turn with a progress bar, the text appears in the box for copying, and every PDF gets its own .txt download. Everything happens in your browser — the files are never uploaded, so it is safe for private paperwork. One honest limit: a scanned PDF has no text layer to read, only pictures of pages. If that is what you have, the tool tells you and points you to the Image to Text (OCR) tool instead.
How to extract text from a PDF
- Decide whether you want --- Page N --- separators (tick or untick the option).
- Drop one or more PDFs onto the box — extraction starts immediately, page by page.
- Copy the text from the box, or download a .txt file for each PDF.
Frequently asked questions
Are my PDFs uploaded to extract the text?
No. The text layer is read by the open-source pdf.js library running inside your browser, and the .txt files are generated on your device. Nothing is sent to a server, so confidential reports and personal documents stay private.
Why did my PDF produce no text or only a few characters?
It is almost certainly a scanned document — each page is just a picture with no text layer underneath. This tool cannot read pixels, so use the Image to Text (OCR) tool instead: convert the pages to images with PDF to JPG, then run OCR on them.
Will the text keep its layout and formatting?
Reading order and line breaks are preserved, and larger vertical gaps become paragraph breaks, but fonts, colours, columns and tables are not — the output is plain text. Multi-column pages come out in the order the PDF stores them, which is usually column by column.
Can I convert several PDFs at once?
Yes. Drop as many files as you like; they are processed one after another with a progress bar, and each PDF gets its own .txt download. The text box shows everything together, with a header line marking where each file begins.
What are the --- Page N --- lines for?
They mark where each PDF page begins so you can find a passage again in the original. If you want continuous text — for word counts, translation or pasting into an editor — untick the page separators option and the markers disappear instantly.