PDF to Text

Convert PDF to text — free, instant, private

Extract every word from a PDF as a clean .txt file. Search, copy, paste into Word, feed into AI, or pipe into your own scripts. No signup. No upload. Runs in your browser.

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PDF to text — frequently asked questions

▶How do I convert a PDF to text online for free?

Drop your PDF on this page or pick one from your computer. Click Convert to text. We extract every word from every page and give you a clean .txt file you can download.

▶Will the extracted text keep its order?

Yes. We group text items by their position on each page so lines flow top-to-bottom and left-to-right. Pages are separated with a divider so it's easy to tell them apart.

▶Does it work with scanned PDFs?

Only for PDFs that already contain a text layer. A 'scanned' PDF is essentially an image, with no underlying text. To extract text from a scan you'd need OCR (optical character recognition), which is a separate workflow.

▶Is the converted file uploaded to your servers?

No. Conversion happens entirely in your web browser. Your PDF and the resulting .txt file never leave your device.

▶Can I copy-paste the result into Word or Google Docs?

Yes. The output is plain text — paste it into anything that accepts text. For a richer Word document with paragraph structure preserved, use our PDF to Word converter instead.

▶Are there file-size limits?

There's no fixed limit, but very large PDFs (hundreds of pages) take longer because everything happens in your browser. Most files convert in seconds.

▶Will it preserve tables, lists or formatting?

Plain text can't carry visual formatting. We preserve text order; bullets and numbers come through if they're in the source as text, but tables become rows of text rather than structured cells. For tables, use our PDF to Excel converter.

Practical guide

Extract text for searching and reuse

Create a plain-text copy of a text-based PDF. This removes page styling and leaves wording you can search, copy or organise in another application. Page separators help show where the original pages ended.

Step by step

Choose a PDF that contains selectable text.
Run the text conversion and download the TXT file.
Open the file in a text editor and compare the reading order, names and numbers with the original.

Before you start

Pictures, signatures, fonts and table structure are not included. Image-only scans need OCR first. Multi-column documents can produce text in an unexpected order.

Example workflow

Extract the wording of a meeting handout so you can search for a date or copy a short quotation. Keep the original PDF for diagrams and formatting.

If the result is not what you expected

If no words appear, try selecting text in the source PDF. Where columns are mixed together, rearrange the output manually and check that no lines were missed.

Keep your original file and check the downloaded result before sharing. Large files may exceed your browser’s memory. Need help? Contact us with the tool name and your browser version; please do not send private documents.