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PDF to Text

Extract all text content from a PDF file. Copy or download as a .txt file.

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Click or drag a PDF here

What is this tool?

A PDF to text extractor is a free online tool that pulls all readable text from a PDF document and converts it to plain text. The extracted text is displayed in a copyable text box — ready to paste into a word processor, translate, search or use in any way.

How to Use

1
Upload your PDFClick or drag and drop the PDF you want to extract text from.
2
Text is extracted automaticallyThe tool processes all pages and extracts all readable text, maintaining paragraph structure where possible.
3
Copy or download the textSelect all text and copy, or use the Download TXT button to save the extracted text as a plain text file.

Common Uses

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Editing

Extract text from a PDF to edit it in a word processor when you do not have the original source file.

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Translation

Extract text for pasting into Google Translate or DeepL to translate documents.

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Searching

Make scanned document text searchable by extracting it to plain text.

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Data Analysis

Extract text data from PDF reports for processing in spreadsheets or analysis tools.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does it work on scanned PDFs?

Scanned PDFs are images of text, not actual text. The tool works on PDFs with embedded text. For scanned PDFs, use the Image to Text OCR tool first to convert the scan to a text-based PDF.

Does it preserve formatting?

Plain text extraction removes formatting (fonts, sizes, columns, tables). The text order is preserved but layout is not. For layout-preserving extraction, use a PDF editing application.

What languages are supported?

Text extraction works for any language that uses Unicode characters — including Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and other scripts.

Can it extract text from tables?

Text in tables is extracted but the column layout may not be preserved. Numbers and text from each cell are extracted in reading order.