PDF to Text
Extract the text from a PDF in your browser, then copy it or save it as a .txt file. Choose all pages or a range. It works on PDFs with selectable text; scanned PDFs need OCR, which this tool does not do.
Your file is processed in your browser and is never uploaded.
- 1Choose your PDF file
- 2Optionally enter the pages you want, such as 1-3, 5 (leave it empty for every page)
- 3Click Extract text
- 4Copy the text or download it as a .txt file
What this tool does
It reads a PDF in your browser with the pdf.js library and pulls out the text that is stored inside the file. You can extract every page or only the pages you list, copy the result, or download it as a .txt file. The PDF is never uploaded.
How to use it
- Choose a PDF file.
- Optionally type pages such as
1-3, 5. Leave the box empty for all pages. - Tick "Add page markers" if you want a
--- Page N ---line before each page. - Click Extract text, then copy or download the result.
What the result looks like
Text comes out in the order the PDF stores it, one line at a time. A new line starts when the text baseline moves or when the PDF marks the end of a line. For a simple invoice you will get the heading, then each line below it, as you would read it. The tool also tells you which pages had no text at all, so a blank page or a scanned page is not silently skipped.
Limits you should know about
- Scanned PDFs have no text to extract. A scan is a picture of a page. The tool reports that no text was found. You would need OCR (text recognition) software, which this tool does not include.
- Layout is not preserved. Multi-column pages, tables and text boxes can come out in an unexpected order, because the PDF stores text in the order it was drawn, not the order you read it. Check any table or two-column result before using it.
- Special characters depend on the PDF. Some PDFs use custom font encodings, so copied text can contain odd characters or missing accents. Hyphenated line breaks are left as they are.
- Password-protected PDFs are refused with a message. Remove the password in a PDF viewer first.
- Very large files depend on your device memory and may be slow on a phone.
What to do next
Paste the text into the word counter to check its length, or into the duplicate line remover to clean a list. To take pages out of a PDF instead of text, use Split PDF, and to combine files use Merge PDF Files.