PDF to Text
Pull the text out of a PDF and copy it or save it as a .txt file. The awkward part of this job is that a PDF does not store sentences — it stores positioned fragments of text with coordinates, so simply concatenating them produces one long run-on line. Here the fragments are grouped back into lines by their position on the page and ordered left to right, which is the difference between output you can use and output you have to repair. Pages that return nothing are listed explicitly, because that almost always means the document is a scan: a picture of text rather than text itself, which needs character recognition instead.
How it works
Pull the text out of a PDF, page by page. A PDF stores text as positioned fragments rather than as sentences, so the fragments are grouped back into lines by their position on the page — which is the difference between readable output and one long run-on paragraph.
A page that returns nothing is almost always a scan: a picture of text rather than text itself, which needs character recognition rather than extraction. Any such pages are listed after the run.
Frequently asked questions
How do I extract text from a PDF?
Upload it and select Extract text. The result appears in a box you can copy from, or download as a .txt file.
Why did my PDF return no text?
Because it is a scan — an image of a page rather than text. Extraction can only find text that is actually stored as text; a scan needs character recognition, which is a different process.
Does it keep the layout?
It keeps line structure, by grouping text fragments that share a baseline and ordering them left to right. Multi-column layouts and tables come out in reading order per line, not as a reconstructed grid.
Can I extract from only some pages?
Yes — name the pages or ranges. Leaving the box empty reads the whole document.
Are page separators added?
By default yes, as a "--- Page N ---" line. Turn that off if you want one continuous block of text.
Is my document uploaded?
No. The text is extracted in your browser and the file never leaves your device.
Related tools
PDF to Images
Render each page of a PDF as a PNG, JPEG or WebP image at any resolution.
PDF Metadata Viewer & Editor
See what a PDF says about itself — title, author, the software that made it — then edit or strip it.
Character & Word Counter
Word counter and character counter that updates live as you type, with sentence, line, and paragraph counts plus reading time.