CONVERT FROM PDF
PDF to Text — Extract the Text Layer (Free)
Extract selectable text from a PDF to a plain .txt file, free and in your browser. Works on PDFs with a real text layer, not scanned images.
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One PDF file — pulls the selectable text out of every page
Pull the words out of a PDF into plain text. Using pdf.js, this reads the document's text layer — the real, selectable characters stored in the file — and hands them back as clean .txt you can copy, search, or feed into another tool. It runs in your browser, so the PDF stays on your device.
The critical caveat: this only works on PDFs that actually contain a text layer. It reads existing characters; it does not recognise them from an image. A scanned or image-only PDF has no text to read and comes back empty — that's an OCR job, not this one.
Troubleshooting
- The result came back empty or nearly empty.
- Your PDF is almost certainly scanned or image-only — the pages are pictures of text with no text layer. Confirm by trying to select a sentence in any viewer: if nothing highlights, there's no text to extract. Run an OCR tool to recognise the words first.
- The text is jumbled or in the wrong order.
- Multi-column layouts, tables, and headers/footers are stored positionally, not as a clean stream, so the reading order can come out scrambled. Expect to re-order columns and tidy spacing on complex pages.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I tell if my PDF has a text layer?
- Open it in any viewer and try to select a sentence with your cursor. If the text highlights and copies, there's a text layer and this tool will extract it. If nothing selects, it's an image and you'll need OCR.
- Is this the same as OCR?
- No. OCR reads letters out of an image by analysing pixels. This lifts text that's already stored in the PDF — faster and exact, but only possible when that text layer exists.
- Is my document uploaded to extract the text?
- No. Extraction runs in your browser with pdf.js, so the PDF is read on your device and nothing is sent to a server.