Pull all the text out of a PDF — every page or just the ones you choose — then copy it or save it as a .txt file. The PDF is read in your browser and never uploaded.
🔒 This tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter or upload is sent to our servers.
How to use the PDF to Text
- Drop a PDF onto the box, or click to choose one. The text of every page is extracted straight away.
- To extract only some pages, type them in the page box — for example 1-3, 5 or 10-.
- Choose whether each page should start with a page marker.
- Copy the text to the clipboard or download it as a .txt file.
About this tool
Copying text out of a PDF by hand is slow and messy: selections jump between columns, line breaks land mid-sentence and page headers get mixed in. This tool reads the text layer of every page and gives it back as plain text, page by page, ready to paste into a document, an email or a translation tool.
It uses PDF.js, the same engine that displays PDFs in Firefox, running entirely inside your browser. That matters for the documents people most often need text from — contracts, statements, reports, CVs — because the file never leaves your device. Nothing is uploaded, and you can disconnect from the internet once the page has loaded.
The tool can only extract text that is actually stored as text. A scanned document is just a picture of a page, with no text inside it; for those pages the tool tells you which ones are image-only, rather than silently returning nothing. Extracting text from a scan needs OCR (optical character recognition). Layout is simplified to reading order — tables come out as lines of text and multi-column pages may need a little tidying — which is usually what you want when the goal is to reuse the words.
Frequently asked questions
How do I extract text from a PDF?
Drop the PDF on the box above. The text of every page appears in the text area within seconds; then click Copy text or Download .txt.
Why is some of my PDF’s text missing?
Those pages are probably scanned images rather than real text. The tool lists any page without a text layer. Getting text from a scan needs OCR software, which recognises the letters in the image.
Can I extract just a few pages?
Yes. Type the pages in the box — 2 for a single page, 1-3 for a range, 1, 4, 7-9 for a mix, or 10- for page 10 to the end.
Does it keep the formatting?
No — it produces plain text, so fonts, bold, images and exact positioning are dropped and the words come out in reading order. Each line of the PDF becomes a line of text, and pages are separated.
Does it work with password-protected PDFs?
Not with ones that need a password to open. If you can open the PDF normally, remove its password first, then extract the text here.
Is my PDF uploaded?
No. The document is read by your own browser and the text is produced on your device. Nothing is sent to a server.