Tools / PDF to Text
Extract text from a PDF
Take the words out of a PDF as a plain text file.
- This tool has no upload step
- This browser-only engine does not send your file
- Every tool driven in a browser each release
Choose a PDF
or drop them here
How it works
- Add the PDF.
- Choose whether to keep the line breaks and whether to mark page starts.
- Take the text out, then download the .txt file.
Taking text out of a PDF that already has it
Most PDFs made by software already carry their words. This lifts them out as plain text rather than trying to read the page as a picture.
Keep the line breaks for poetry and addresses, drop them for prose
Prose copied with every line break kept has to be reflowed by hand before you can paste it anywhere.
Mark page starts when you need to cite
A marker at each page break lets you say which page a quotation came from.
Columns come out in reading order, usually
A two column layout is read left column then right. Check the join where the columns meet.
If you get nothing back, the pages are pictures
A scan holds no text to extract. Use Image to Text, which reads the picture.
Where this is the wrong tool. This extracts text that is already in the file. It does not recognise words in a photograph or a scan, and shows a no-text message without exporting an empty file.
When the browser is not enough
Scanly for Android
Take document-scanning workflows to your Android phone with Scanly. See the Google Play listing for current features, requirements and data-processing information.
Questions
It says there is no text in my PDF. Why?
Because its pages are pictures. That is what a scan or a photographed document is, and a picture of words contains no words, however clearly you can read them. Getting text out of that needs recognition rather than extraction, which is a different job. The page tells you this before it hands you anything, rather than giving you an empty file to puzzle over.
Do my files get uploaded?
No. The PDF is read in this page, in your browser. There is no upload step and no server here that could receive one.
Will the text come out in the right order?
Usually, and it is not guaranteed. A PDF stores letters at positions and has no idea what a column is, so a two column layout or a newspaper page can interleave. Ordinary documents come out correctly; check anything that was laid out in columns.
What happens to tables?
They lose their shape. A table in a PDF is text at coordinates with no structure behind it, so it arrives as lines of words. There is no honest way around that at this level.
What is the difference between the two layout choices?
Keeping line breaks gives you the text as the page laid it out, one line per line. Joining paragraphs removes the line wraps inside a paragraph but keeps the breaks between them, which is what you want for pasting into something that will re-wrap the text itself.
Can I get the text of one page only?
Not directly. Take that page out with Split PDF first, then run it through here.
Does it work without a connection?
Opening the page needs one, and so does the first PDF you open, because that is when this site hands over the reader. Everything after that is local.