PDF to Text
Pull the plain, copyable text out of a PDF and save it as a .txt file.
Select a PDF
Click to choose, or drop a file here
How to use PDF to Text
- 1
Open the tool
Open the PDF to Text tool and drop your file onto the page, or click to browse for it. Everything runs in your browser — the file is never uploaded.
- 2
Extract the text
Click Extract to pull the plain, copyable text out of the PDF.
- 3
Download the .txt file
Download the text file or copy the contents from the page.
Related PDF tools
PDF to Text — frequently asked questions
Does this work on scanned PDFs?+
Only if the PDF already has a selectable text layer. A purely scanned image has no text to extract — run OCR PDF first, then convert the result.
Will tables and columns come out in a readable order?+
Text is reconstructed line by line from each glyph's position on the page, so simple layouts read naturally. Multi-column pages and dense tables may interleave — for those, PDF to Markdown or PDF to Excel usually preserves structure better.
What happens to images and formatting?+
Only text is extracted — no images, fonts, or layout. It's meant for quickly getting plain, copyable text out of a document.
Do you upload my files to a server?+
No — every tool here processes your files entirely on your device, and nothing is uploaded to a server. The AI tools that used to send extracted text to a server are currently disabled.
Is there a file size limit?+
There's no artificial limit we impose, but since processing happens in your browser, very large files (500+ MB or 1,000+ pages) are limited by your device's memory rather than by us.
Advertisement