PDF to Text

PDF to Text reads the text layer of your PDF and saves it as a plain .txt file, with line breaks and paragraph gaps kept. It runs in your browser, so the document is never uploaded.

Sometimes you only need the words: to paste into an email, search with another program, feed into a spreadsheet, or reuse in another document. Copying from a PDF by hand often loses line breaks or grabs page numbers and headers along the way. This tool reads each page in order, joins the pieces of each line, and separates paragraphs by the space between them.

It works on PDFs that contain real text, such as exported documents, e-books and reports. A scanned PDF is only a picture of paper and has no text to extract; the tool will tell you so instead of producing an empty file. Those need OCR, which this tool does not include.

Tables and multi-column pages come out as running lines, so expect to tidy them. For an editable document with headings and paragraphs, use PDF to Word instead.

How it works

1. 1Upload a PDF with selectable text.
2. 2Click Extract text.
3. 3Download the .txt file.

Frequently asked questions