Extract Text from a PDF

Pull the text out of a PDF as plain, copyable text.

Drop a PDF here, or tap to chooseProcessed entirely in your browser — the file is never uploaded.

What does PDF Text Extractor do?

Extract all the text from a PDF into a plain text box you can copy, search or download. Works page by page so you can take just the section you need, and tells you clearly when a PDF contains no text layer.

How to Use PDF Text Extractor

1
Upload the PDFText extraction begins as soon as it loads.
2
Choose a page rangeOptional — leave blank for the whole document.
3
Copy or downloadTake the text into your editor of choice.

Key Features

Full document text, or a single page range
Page markers so you can tell where each page begins
Word and character counts for the extracted text
Download as .txt or copy to the clipboard
Detects image-only PDFs and says so rather than returning nothing

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my PDF return no text?

Because it is a scan — a picture of a page rather than text. Extracting words from an image needs optical character recognition, which this tool does not do. Your PDF reader or a dedicated OCR service can add a text layer.

Why is the spacing odd in the extracted text?

PDF stores glyphs at coordinates rather than as flowing paragraphs, so column layouts, tables and hyphenation reconstruct imperfectly. Running the output through the text cleaner fixes most of it.

Does this work on protected PDFs?

Only if the document opens without a password. Files encrypted with a user password must be unlocked first, which requires the password you already have.