PDF to Text
Extract plain text from a PDF file.
About PDF to Text
Pull the plain text out of a PDF so you can search, copy, or reuse it elsewhere. Useful when you need the words from a report, contract, or ebook without the layout, or want to feed the content into another tool. It runs in your browser, so the document itself is never uploaded.
- Category
- export
- Input
- Accepts: application/pdf.
- Output
- Outputs: text/plain.
- Cost
- Free, runs in your browser
- Memory
- medium
Common uses
- Copy the body text out of a research paper into your notes without retyping
- Pull quotes and clauses from a contract to paste into an email or summary
- Extract an ebook's text to count words or reformat it for an e-reader
- Grab the text from a printable invoice to reconcile figures in a spreadsheet
- Get a clean text version of a PDF to run through a diff or word counter
- Liberate text trapped in a PDF export so you can repurpose it in a doc
Frequently asked questions
Does this work on scanned PDFs?
It extracts text that already exists in the PDF as selectable text. Scanned image-only PDFs have no embedded text, so use an OCR tool for those.
What is the output format?
Plain text (text/plain), with the words extracted from the document so you can copy or save them.
Will my PDF be uploaded?
No. Text extraction happens locally in your browser, so the file stays on your device.
Why does the spacing or order look slightly off?
PDFs store text by position, not reading order, so complex multi-column or heavily designed layouts can extract out of sequence. Simple documents extract cleanly.
Is there a page or size limit?
There is no hard limit, but very large PDFs take longer to process since all the work happens in your browser.
Keywords
- text
- extract
- ocr
- read
- parse