Does it work on scanned PDFs?

No. Scanned PDFs are images of pages with no embedded text layer, so there is nothing to extract. Reading them needs OCR software, which this tool does not offer. PDFs created from Word, Google Docs, or “print to PDF” work fine.

Is my PDF uploaded anywhere?

No. The whole extraction happens in your browser using JavaScript. Your file never leaves your device.

Will formatting or tables survive?

No — the output is plain text only. Paragraphs, headings, bold text and table layouts are not preserved; tables and multi-column layouts come out as approximate text flow.

Is there a page limit?

Yes: 200 pages per run. Very large documents can make a browser tab slow or unresponsive, so the run stops at 200 pages and tells you the output was truncated. For bigger files, split the PDF first and extract each part separately.

PDF to Text Extractor

Pull the text out of any text-based PDF — copy it or download a .txt file. Scanned-image PDFs have no text to extract (that needs OCR).

Private by design: this tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files are never uploaded to a server, and nothing is stored.

Tap to choose a PDF — or drop it here

One PDF at a time

How to use it

Choose a PDF. Tap the box above or drag one PDF into it.

Extract the text. The tool reads the text layer of each page, right in your browser.

Copy or download. Copy the result to your clipboard or save it as a .txt file.

Why extract text from a PDF?

Extracting a PDF's text turns a fixed-layout document into plain words you can work with: lift a quote for an article, grab passages for citations, reuse your own content in a new document, or feed a report into translation and summarising tools without retyping it by hand.

This works on text-based PDFs — documents created from Word, Google Docs, a browser's “print to PDF”, or exported from an app. It does not work on scanned PDFs (photos of pages). A scanned page contains no text to extract, only pixels; reading it requires OCR (optical character recognition), which this tool does not do. If your extraction comes back empty, your PDF is almost certainly a scan.

PDF to Text Extractor

How to use it

Why extract text from a PDF?

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