PDF to Text Converter
Extract selectable text from a PDF in your browser, with optional page markers.
How to use the PDF to Text Converter
Step 1 — Upload the PDF
- Drop in a text-based PDF. It is read in your browser.
Step 2 — Choose markers
- Keep "Page N" markers or turn them off for continuous text.
Step 3 — Review
- The extracted text appears, with a page and word count.
Step 4 — Copy or download
- Copy the text or save it as a .txt file.
Frequently asked questions
It reads the text layer already embedded in the PDF — the same characters you can select and copy in a PDF viewer — and pulls them out page by page, grouping items back into lines.
No. A scanned document is just images of pages with no text layer, so there is nothing to extract. Converting those needs OCR (optical character recognition), which this tool does not perform. If the result is empty, your PDF is almost certainly scanned.
An optional divider printed before each page’s text so you can see where one page ends and the next begins. Turn it off for a continuous block of text.
Basic line breaks are reconstructed from each item’s position, but complex multi-column layouts, tables, and exact spacing may not survive, since a PDF stores text as positioned fragments rather than flowing paragraphs.
No. The file is read and processed entirely in your browser; nothing is sent to a server.
About the PDF to Text Converter
This tool extracts the text content from a PDF and gives it to you as plain text you can edit, search, or reuse. It reads the document’s existing text layer page by page, reconstructs the lines, and outputs clean text — all in your browser, with nothing uploaded.
What it does and how
A text-based PDF stores its words as selectable characters positioned on each page. This converter reads exactly those characters — the same ones you could highlight and copy in a PDF reader — and assembles them back into lines using each fragment’s position on the page. You can keep an optional "Page N" marker before each page so you know where boundaries fall, or switch it off for one continuous block. A live count shows how many pages and words were extracted.
An honest word on limits
Two limits are worth understanding up front. First, this only works on PDFs that actually contain text. A scanned document — a photo or scan of a page — is a picture with no text layer, so there is nothing to pull out and the result will be empty; turning those into text requires OCR, which is a different and much heavier process this tool does not do. Second, PDFs store text as positioned fragments rather than flowing paragraphs, so simple documents extract cleanly while complex multi-column layouts, tables, and precise spacing may come out reordered or flattened. For straightforward reports, articles, and letters the output is excellent; for heavily designed pages, expect to tidy it up.
Privacy
The entire extraction runs locally in your browser using JavaScript, so your PDF never leaves your device and there is no file-size limit beyond your own memory. To analyse or count the extracted text, paste it into the Word Counter.