Convert PDF to Text
Pull out every word into a plain .txt file.
How it works
- Upload your PDF.
- Text is extracted from every page in reading order.
- Preview the result.
- Download it as a single plain .txt file.
Does this preserve formatting, tables, or layout?
No — it pulls out the raw text in reading order as a single .txt file. Layout, fonts, and formatting are not preserved.
Will this work on a scanned PDF?
Only if the PDF already has selectable text. Scanned pages that are just images (no OCR) produce empty or near-empty text for those pages.
Can I get one .txt file per page instead of one combined file?
Currently it's one combined text file for the whole document, in page order.
Does this work on PDFs in languages other than English?
Yes — it extracts whatever selectable text the PDF contains, in any language, as long as the text is real (not a scanned image without OCR).
Why is some of my extracted text jumbled or out of order?
PDFs don't always store text in strict visual reading order internally, especially multi-column layouts — extraction follows the file's internal text order, which can occasionally differ from the visual layout.
How can I tell where one page ends and the next begins in the output?
Each page is separated by a line reading "--- page break ---" in the downloaded .txt file, so you can always tell where one page's text stops and the next one starts.
Why doesn't the output keep line breaks or paragraphs?
Within each page, all the text is joined into a single block using spaces — the original line and paragraph breaks aren't kept. If you need paragraphs and headings rebuilt, use our PDF to Word tool instead.
What's the difference between this and PDF to Word?
PDF to Text gives you a flat text dump of every page — good for copying, searching, or pasting into another program. PDF to Word rebuilds paragraphs and headings from the page's font sizes and positions, so you get an editable .docx that looks like a document instead of a text dump. Use PDF to Text when you just need the words; use PDF to Word when you want something you can edit and format.
My PDF is scanned — how do I still get text out of it?
This tool only reads text that's already embedded in the PDF; a scanned page with no text layer has nothing to extract. Run it through our OCR PDF tool first to add a text layer, then come back and extract the text.
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