Copying text out of a PDF by hand is slow and often mangles line breaks. This tool reads the text layer of every page and writes it to a single plain text file, page by page.
What kind of PDF does this work on?
Any PDF with real text in it, which covers almost everything exported from Word, Google Docs, accounting software or a browser. A quick test: if you can select a sentence in your PDF reader, this tool can extract it.
Scanned PDFs are different. Each page is a photo of text with no text layer behind it, so there is nothing to extract, and the tool tells you so. For those, use OCR, which reads the characters from the image.
What does the output look like?
A UTF-8 .txt file. Accented letters and non-Latin scripts come through as long as the PDF stores them correctly. The tool keeps the reading order it finds on the page, so single-column documents come out cleanly. Multi-column layouts, footnotes and headers can end up interleaved with the body text, and tables become rows of words separated by spaces. Formatting such as bold, font size and images is not kept; for that, use PDF to Word.
Where are my files processed?
Extraction runs on our server. The PDF is uploaded over an encrypted connection, the text is extracted in Germany, and both files are deleted automatically within two hours.
What are the limits?
PDFs up to 50 MB are free without an account, and you get 20 server jobs a day before Pro or credits come in; Pro takes files up to 500 MB and has no cap. Extraction is fast, usually a second or two even for long documents. If you are building a searchable archive from hundreds of PDFs, Pro or credits let you extract them as one batch and download the text files in a ZIP.
How to extract text from a PDF
- Drop your PDF onto the drop zone.
- Click Extract text.
- Download the .txt file.
FAQ
Why does it say the PDF has no text layer?
The PDF is a scan, or was saved as images. Use OCR instead.
Why are some words joined or split oddly?
Some PDFs position each word or letter separately without spaces between them. The extractor rebuilds spacing from positions, which is not always perfect.
Can I extract text from a password-protected PDF?
Unlock it first with Unlock PDF.
Can I keep the columns and spacing of the page?
Yes. Keep page layout is on by default and preserves the horizontal arrangement, which helps with tables. Turn it off for plain flowing text that is easier to paste.