PDF to Text

PDF to Text extracts the plain text content from a PDF file so you can copy, paste, search, or repurpose it elsewhere. It is the tool you need when someone sends you a PDF and you need the text inside — to quote a paragraph in an email, to translate a section, to run a word count, to check a fact, or to import content into a different document without retyping. The tool uses pdfjs-dist, the same rendering engine behind Firefox and Chrome PDF viewers, to extract text content from each page. For digital PDFs — those created from word processors, desktop publishing software, or save-as-PDF exports — the extraction is fast and accurate because the text is stored as actual characters in the PDF content stream. The tool preserves paragraph breaks between pages but does not attempt to reconstruct complex multi-column layouts, tables, or formatting. An important limitation: this tool extracts only digital text — characters that are stored as selectable text in the PDF. If your PDF was created by scanning a physical document (a scanner produces an image, not text), there is no text to extract — the result will appear empty. For scanned PDFs, you need Optical Character Recognition (OCR), which is a planned future feature currently under consideration. In the meantime, check whether your PDF has selectable text by trying to highlight a word with your mouse in a PDF reader — if text is selectable, this tool can extract it. The extracted text is displayed in a scrollable text area on the page, where you can review it before copying or downloading. The text is plain Unicode — no formatting, no fonts, no colours, just the characters. This is deliberate: plain text is the most portable, pasteable, and reusable format.