Convert PDF to Text
Get the words out of a PDF to edit, quote, translate or count them. The text of every page is extracted in reading order and saved as a plain text file you can open anywhere.
How to extract text from a PDF
- 1Choose the PDF.
- 2Click “Extract text”.
- 3Read a preview of the text and download the .txt file.
Scanned PDFs
A scan is a picture of a page, so it has no text to extract. If the result is empty, the PDF is a scan and needs OCR (text recognition) first.
Page by page
For PDFs with more than one page, each page's text starts with a “--- Page 3 ---” line, so you can find where it came from.
Layout
Text comes out as plain lines without fonts, columns or tables. Multi-column layouts may read across columns.
Frequently asked questions
- Is it free?
- Yes. There's no signup, no watermark and no limit on the number of files.
- Are my PDFs uploaded?
- No. The PDF is processed in your browser, on your own device, and never leaves it.
- Why is the text empty?
- The PDF is probably a scan or a photo of a document: its pages are images, not text.
- Which languages are supported?
- Any. The text file is UTF-8, so accented letters, Hindi, Chinese and Arabic come through, as long as the PDF stores them as real text.