How to use it
- Drop your PDF here.
- Click Extract text.
- Review the text in the box.
- Click Copy, or Download as TXT.
When plain text is what you need
Copying text from a PDF viewer is often painful: selections jump across columns, line breaks land mid-sentence, and long documents need dozens of copy actions. Extracting all the text at once is faster for:
- Quoting or summarizing a report, article or court document.
- Feeding text into another tool: a translator, a word counter, a spreadsheet or an AI assistant.
- Searching and indexing many documents.
- Reusing content from a PDF whose source file you no longer have.
- Accessibility, when you want to read the content in a plain-text reader or larger font.
How the extraction works
The tool reads the text layer of each page, in the order it is stored in the PDF, and keeps line breaks where the PDF marks the end of a line. Pages are separated by a blank line. Trailing spaces are trimmed so the text is tidy to paste.
What to expect:
| PDF type | Result |
|---|---|
| Exported from Word, Google Docs or a website | Clean, complete text |
| Multi-column layouts | Text usually follows the stored order, which is often column by column |
| Tables | Cell contents appear as lines of text, not as a table |
| Scanned documents or photos | No text, because the pages are images |
If the PDF has no extractable text, the tool tells you. That almost always means it is scanned; use OCR PDF to recognize the text first.
Hyphenated words at line ends are kept as they appear in the PDF, so a word split across two lines in the original will show the hyphen in the text too.
Copy or download
The extracted text appears in a box where you can scroll through it and select parts. Copy puts everything on your clipboard. Download as TXT saves a UTF-8 text file named after the PDF, which opens in any text editor and keeps accented and special characters intact.
Private and instant
The PDF is read in your browser and never uploaded, so this is safe for confidential reports, legal filings or medical records. Extraction is fast: most documents finish in a second or two, and you see the progress page by page on long files.
Nothing is added to the text: no watermark, no header, no tracking. What you copy is exactly what was in the PDF.
Text, Word or OCR?
- Just the words: PDF to text (this tool).
- Editable document with headings, bold and images: PDF to Word.
- Scanned pages: OCR PDF, which can output text, Word or a searchable PDF.
- Comparing two versions: Compare PDF highlights the differences in the text for you.
A worked example
You need to quote three paragraphs from a 60-page government report and also run the whole report through a word counter. Drop the PDF here and click Extract text. Scroll to the section you need and select the paragraphs to copy them, then click Copy to grab everything for the word counter. If you want to keep the text for later, Download as TXT saves a file you can search with any editor. The whole process takes seconds and the report never leaves your computer.
Frequently asked questions
How do I extract text from a PDF?
Drop the PDF here and click Extract text. Then copy the text or download it as a TXT file.
Why is the result empty?
The PDF is probably scanned, so it contains images rather than text. Use OCR PDF to recognize the text.
Does it keep formatting?
No. You get plain text with line breaks. For formatting, use PDF to Word.
Is my PDF uploaded?
No. The text is extracted in your browser.
Can I extract text from only some pages?
The tool extracts all pages; select and copy just the part you need from the text box.
Last updated: November 12, 2026