In short: PDF to Text extracts the selectable text layer of a PDF — page by page — into plain text you can copy, search or save as a .txt file; scanned PDFs without a text layer need OCR instead.
About PDF to Text
Copying text from a PDF viewer often scrambles columns, drops line breaks or only works one page at a time. This tool reads the text layer of the whole document with Mozilla’s PDF.js — the engine inside Firefox’s PDF viewer — and rebuilds lines from the position of each piece of text.
It works for PDFs created from Word, Google Docs, LaTeX, web pages and most invoices and reports. Scanned documents are just pictures of pages with no text layer; for those you will see a message telling you OCR is needed. The file is processed in your browser and never uploaded.
How to use PDF to Text
- Choose or drop a PDF.
- Optionally enter a page range.
- Press Extract text, then copy it or download a .txt file.
Examples
Extract pages 4–6 of a 60-page report and paste the text straight into your notes.
A scanned letter returns “no text found”, because the pages contain only images.
Frequently asked questions
Why is the text in the wrong order?
PDFs store text as positioned fragments. Multi-column layouts and text boxes can come out in reading order that differs from what you see. Lines are rebuilt top-to-bottom and left-to-right per page.
Can it read scanned PDFs?
No. Scans need optical character recognition (OCR), which this tool does not do.
Are password-protected PDFs supported?
PDFs that need a password to open cannot be read. Remove the password in a PDF app first.
Is my PDF uploaded?
No. Text extraction runs entirely in your browser. You can check this yourself: open your browser’s developer tools, switch to the Network tab and use the tool — no request carries your input.
Updated November 2026 · Free, no signup · How we build and test tools