Convert
Extract Text From PDF
Extract selectable text from any PDF.
Processed locally — your files never leave your device
How to use PDF to Text
- 1
Open your PDF.
- 2
Choose whether to preserve the line layout or extract raw flowing text.
- 3
Click Extract — the text appears for review.
- 4
Copy it to your clipboard or download it as a .txt file.
About this tool
Need the words without the formatting? This tool pulls every character of selectable text out of a PDF — for quoting, translating, feeding to other software, indexing, or just pasting into an email without bringing along the layout.
The layout toggle changes how the text is assembled. With layout preservation on, line breaks land roughly where they appear on the page, which keeps addresses, code listings and tables readable. With it off, you get continuous flowing text that's better for re-wrapping in a word processor.
Important caveat: this extracts the text a PDF actually contains. Scanned documents are pictures of text — there's nothing to extract. If your result comes back empty, run the document through our OCR PDF tool first, which recognizes the characters in the scan and makes them extractable.
Frequently asked questions
Why did my PDF produce no text?
It's almost certainly a scan — the pages are images, not text. Use the OCR PDF tool to recognize the characters first; its plain-text output mode does exactly what this tool does, but for scans.
Does it handle multi-column layouts?
Text is extracted in the order it's stored in the file, which usually follows reading order but can interleave columns in complex layouts. The layout-preservation mode generally handles columns better.
Are headers, footers and page numbers included?
Yes — everything that's selectable text on the page is extracted. Pages are separated by a divider line so you can strip repeating headers easily.
What encoding is the .txt file?
UTF-8, so accented characters, non-Latin scripts and symbols survive intact in any modern editor.