How to extract text from a PDF
- Drop a PDF into the box or click to choose one; text extraction starts automatically.
- Wait while each page is read; the extracted text appears in the text box.
- Turn Page separators on or off to include or remove --- Page N --- markers.
- Click Copy to put the text on your clipboard, or Download .txt to save it.
What you can do with PDF to Text
- Page-by-page extraction
- Reads every page in order and keeps line breaks where lines change, so paragraphs stay recognizable.
- Optional page separators
- Mark where each page begins with --- Page N --- lines, or turn them off for one continuous block of text.
- Copy or download
- Copy all text to the clipboard in one click or save it as a UTF-8 .txt file named after your PDF.
- Word and character count
- See the number of pages, words and characters, which helps with translation quotes and essay limits.
- Scanned PDF detection
- If a PDF contains no text layer, the tool tells you it is probably scanned images that need OCR.
Text-based vs scanned PDFs: what can be extracted
Most PDFs created from Word, Google Docs, websites or accounting software contain a real text layer, and that is what this tool reads, using Mozilla's pdf.js. The result is plain text: fonts, colors, images and tables are dropped, and multi-column layouts or tables may come out in reading order that needs some tidying. Extracting to plain text is useful for quoting a report, pasting content into an email or CMS, feeding a document into a translation or AI tool, or counting words.
Scanned documents and photos saved as PDF are different. They are images of text, with no characters stored in the file, so there is nothing to extract and the tool will tell you no text was found. Those files need OCR (optical character recognition), which this tool does not do. A quick test: if you cannot highlight a word in your PDF reader, the page is an image. For PDFs with selectable text, extraction is fast, even for documents with hundreds of pages.
Frequently asked questions
Is it safe to extract text from my PDF here?
Yes. The text is read from the PDF by your browser, on your device. The document is not uploaded, and the extracted text only leaves the page if you copy or download it yourself.
Why is no text found in my PDF?
The PDF is most likely a scan or a photo, so each page is an image rather than real text. This tool does not perform OCR. You can still convert the pages to images with PDF to JPG and run them through an OCR app.
Does it keep formatting and tables?
No. The output is plain text, so bold, fonts, colors and images are removed. Line breaks are kept where lines change, but tables and multi-column layouts may need manual cleanup after you paste the text.
Can I convert PDF to a Word document?
Not directly. This tool produces a .txt file. You can copy the extracted text into Word or Google Docs and format it there, which works well for text-heavy documents like letters, articles and reports.
Does PDF to text work on mobile?
Yes. Load a PDF in your phone's browser, then tap Copy to paste the text into another app or Download .txt to save it to your files. It works in mobile Safari, Chrome and Firefox.