How to extract text from a PDF into a .txt file
Copying from a PDF page by page is slow, and formatting often breaks. PDF to text extracts everything into a .txt file.
Steps
- Add your PDF.
- Choose whether to Mark page breaks in the text file (on by default).
- Enter the password if the PDF needs one to open.
- Download the text file.
What to expect
PDFs that contain real text (exported from Word, web pages and most modern tools) extract well. The layout, such as columns and tables, becomes plain lines of text, so you may need some tidying.
Scanned PDFs
A scan is a picture of text, so there is no text to extract. This tool does not do OCR (turning pictures of letters into text). A scanned file will give you an empty or nearly empty result.
What to do with the text
- Count it with Word counter.
- Compare two versions of a document with Text diff.
- Change capitalisation with Case converter.
Tip
Turn page-break markers on if you need to find where each page starts, and off for clean text you will paste elsewhere.