PDF to text
Pull the words out of a PDF — never uploaded.
How it works
Three steps, and nothing leaves your device.
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1
Drop the PDF in
It is read in the page; nothing is sent anywhere.
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2
The text layer is read out
Fragments are grouped back into lines by their position on the page, so the layout survives.
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3
Copy it or save it
The text appears on screen to copy, and downloads as a .txt file.
Text layers, and when a PDF has none
- Most PDFs already contain their text. A PDF made from a word processor, a web page or a spreadsheet stores the actual characters alongside instructions for drawing them. Reading them back is exact and instant — no recognition, and no chance of a misread character.
- A scanned PDF contains no text at all. If the document came from a scanner or a phone camera, every page is a picture. There are no characters to extract, and this tool will say so rather than hand you an empty file. Reading it needs OCR: Image To Text does that, and handles Chinese and Japanese including vertical writing.
- Fragments are regrouped into lines. PDF stores text as positioned fragments, not sentences — sometimes a word at a time. Joining them in file order runs columns together and loses every line break, so fragments are grouped by their vertical position first and then ordered left to right.
- Columns and tables are still the hard case. Line grouping recovers ordinary prose well. A two-column layout or a table has fragments from different logical blocks sharing a vertical position, and those can interleave. Check the result before relying on it.
Frequently asked questions
Is this OCR?
No, and that is the point. It reads characters the PDF already stores, so the result is exact. OCR is only needed when the PDF is a scan with no text layer.
What if my PDF is a scan?
The tool will tell you there is no text layer. Use Image To Text, which runs OCR and handles Chinese and Japanese including vertical writing.
Is the file uploaded?
No. The PDF is parsed on your device and never sent anywhere.
Why is my table jumbled?
Text in a PDF is a set of positioned fragments with no notion of a table. Fragments are grouped into lines by position, which works well for prose and can interleave columns.