PDF to Text

Extract selectable text from a PDF and copy it or download it as a plain .txt file. Works on any PDF with real (non-scanned) text content.

Click or drag & drop a PDF file

Supported: PDF files with selectable text

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Why use PDF to Text?

This tool reads the selectable text layer already embedded in a PDF — the same text you could highlight and copy in a PDF viewer — and extracts it page by page using pdfjs-dist, entirely in your browser. It only works on PDFs that contain real text; scanned, image-only PDFs have no text layer to extract and require OCR instead.

Key benefits

Extracts text from every page in one pass
Processed entirely in your browser
No signup, no file size games

Features

Page-by-page text extraction
Copy-to-clipboard and .txt download

Popular use cases

Pulling text out of a report for editing elsewhere
Extracting a passage from a PDF for a citation or quote

How to use PDF to Text

1
Upload a PDF
Click or drag a PDF file into the upload area.
2
Wait for extraction
The tool reads the selectable text from every page automatically.
3
Copy or download
Use Copy Text or Download .txt to save the extracted text.

Frequently asked questions

Why did I get an empty result?

The PDF likely has no selectable text — this happens with scanned documents saved as images. Those need OCR (optical character recognition) instead of direct text extraction.

Does this work on scanned PDFs?

Not directly — scanned PDFs have no embedded text layer to extract. Use an OCR-based tool for scanned documents.

Is my file uploaded anywhere?

No. Text extraction happens entirely in your browser using pdfjs-dist.

Last reviewed: July 2026

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