How to extract text from a PDF
- Drop a PDF on the box. The text is extracted straight away.
- Optionally limit it to certain pages, turn page markers on or off, or join broken lines back into paragraphs, which is useful for copying text from columns or justified layouts.
- Copy the text or download it as a
.txtfile.
Digital PDFs vs scanned PDFs
PDFs created from Word, Google Docs, websites or accounting software contain real text, which this tool reads directly and exactly, including accented letters and other languages. Words are reassembled into lines in reading order, from top to bottom and left to right.
Scanned PDFs and photos of documents contain only pictures of text. If the tool finds no text on a page, it tells you; use the OCR PDF tool, which recognises printed text in images in many languages, also entirely in your browser.
Extracting text is handy for quoting from reports, pasting a CV into an application form, translating a document, feeding text to a word counter or AI assistant, or searching large documents. Tables become lines of text with spaces between cells; for structured data, copy the relevant lines into a spreadsheet and use text-to-columns.
Private extraction
The PDF is processed with Mozilla's PDF.js in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
Why is my extracted text empty?
The PDF is probably a scan. It contains images, not text, so it needs optical character recognition (OCR).
Why are some words joined or split oddly?
Some PDFs store text in unusual pieces or columns. Try "Join lines into paragraphs", or copy page by page.
Can it extract text from password-protected PDFs?
Only if they can be opened without a password. Remove the password in a PDF reader first.