To convert a PDF to text, select Select PDF File and the tool extracts the text from every page right away. Check the result in the Combined Extracted Text box, then select Copy All Text or Download Result to save a .txt file. It reads the PDF's text layer in your browser, so scanned pages without real text come back empty.
How to convert PDF to text
- Load the PDF. Drag a PDF onto the drop area or select Select PDF File. Text extraction starts straight away and each page gets its own card with character and word counts.
- Choose your pages. All pages are selected at first. Tick or untick page cards, or pick an option in Quick Select (such as Odd Pages or First 3 Pages), which applies straight away. To use a typed Page Range, press Enter or select Apply Range.
- Tidy the text. Set Line Breaks to Smart Preserve, Paragraph Focus or Flatten Lines, and Page Separator to add page labels if you want them.
- Copy or download. Select Copy All Text, or pick an Export Format (Plain TXT, Page-wise TXT or JSON) and select Download Result.
How to extract text from a PDF that won't copy properly
Copying from a PDF viewer often gives broken lines, missing spaces or text from two columns mixed together. That happens because a PDF stores text as positioned pieces, not as paragraphs. This converter rebuilds lines from those positions and lets you choose how much cleanup to apply.
- Smart Preserve (default) keeps line breaks, joins words split by a hyphen at the end of a line, and collapses extra blank lines.
- Paragraph Focus keeps paragraph gaps but trims runs of empty lines.
- Flatten Lines joins each page into one long block, which is handy for pasting into a form or a translator.
Text Cleanup has its own menu: Balanced follows your Line Breaks choice, Raw Tokens keeps the text exactly as extracted, and Compact flattens everything. One side effect of hyphen joining: a compound like well-known that breaks across two lines comes out as wellknown. Switch to Raw Tokens if that matters.
Plain TXT, page-wise TXT or JSON?
| Export Format | What you get | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Plain TXT | The Combined Extracted Text, with your chosen page separator | Editing, pasting into Word or Google Docs |
| Page-wise TXT | One text file with a ========== PAGE 3 ========== header before each page | Quoting with page references |
| JSON | File name, page count, and for each page its number, text, character and word counts and a likely-scanned flag | Feeding the text into a script or database |
Text files are saved as UTF-8, so accented letters and non-Latin scripts keep their characters. You can also edit the Combined Extracted Text box before you copy or download it, and each page card has its own Copy Page and Download buttons.
Why some PDFs give no text: scans and OCR
This tool reads the text layer that's already inside the PDF. It does not do OCR (optical character recognition). A scanned document or a photo saved as PDF is only pictures of pages, so there's nothing to extract. Pages with fewer than 20 characters are marked OCR needed? so you can spot them quickly.
For those files you need an OCR app first. Once the PDF has a text layer, load it here again. If you only want the page pictures, the PDF to JPG converter saves each page as an image.
Layout is the other limit. Multi-column pages can come out with lines from side-by-side columns joined together, and tables turn into rows of text separated by spaces. For documents where layout matters, try the PDF to Word converter instead.
Search and pick pages before you export
Type a word or phrase in Search in Extracted Text and every match is highlighted on the page cards. The header shows the total hits, and pages without a match are hidden, which makes it quick to find the one clause you need in a 200-page contract. Preview Length (120 to 1,200 characters) controls how much of each page shows on its card.
Only selected pages go into the Combined Extracted Text and the download. The Total Characters and Total Words figures count the selected pages only, which helps when a form limits how much you can paste. To clean the result further, paste it into the line break remover.
Frequently asked questions
How do I convert a PDF to a TXT file?
Load the PDF here, leave Export Format on Plain TXT and select Download Result. The text from all selected pages is saved as a UTF-8 .txt file.
How do I copy text from a PDF?
Load the PDF into this converter and select Copy All Text, or use Copy Page on a single page card. The text goes to your clipboard with cleaner line breaks than copying from most PDF viewers.
Can I extract text from a scanned PDF?
No. Scanned PDFs contain images, not text, and this tool doesn't do OCR. Pages like that are flagged OCR needed? and come back empty.
Does it work with password-protected PDFs?
A PDF that needs a password to open won't load. Remove the password first with the PDF password remover, using the password you know.
Why is the text from my PDF in the wrong order?
Lines are rebuilt from their position on the page, so pages with two or more columns can mix lines from each column. Single-column documents usually come out in reading order.
Is my PDF uploaded anywhere?
No. The text is extracted in your browser with the PDF.js library. Your PDF and the extracted text never leave your device.