Copy All the Text out of a PDF
Pull a PDF's text layer out page by page into a .txt file, with the same text shown on screen to copy.
Free, with no sign-up and no watermark. The file is processed in your browser and never uploaded.
Pull all the text out of a PDF into a plain .txt file, page by page. The text is also shown on screen so you can copy it to the clipboard straight away.
This reads the PDF's existing text layer. Scanned documents are pictures of text, so run Searchable PDF (OCR) on them first.
Step by step
- Upload the PDF: Any PDF with selectable text.
- Extract: Click Extract Text. Progress shows each page being read.
- Download or copy: The .txt file downloads automatically; use Copy to clipboard for the on-screen version.
- Find your page: Each page starts with a "--- Page N ---" marker.
Handy for
Quoting
Copy passages from reports and papers without retyping.
Data clean-up
Paste text into a spreadsheet or editor for further work.
Accessibility
Read a document with tools that work best with plain text.
Search
Index document text in your own notes app.
Good to know
Multi-column layouts may come out in the order the PDF stores them, which isn't always reading order.
If you see "No text layer found", the file is a scan.
To keep formatting, convert to Word instead of plain text.
Questions
Are my files uploaded anywhere?
No. The file is read and processed by JavaScript running in your browser tab. Nothing is sent to a server, and the result is created on your device.
Why are some characters missing or garbled?
Some PDFs use fonts without proper character mappings, so their text can't be decoded reliably.
Is formatting kept?
No — the output is plain text with line breaks.
Does it work offline?
Once the page has finished loading, processing happens locally, so a dropped connection won't interrupt a job that is already running.
Further reading
- PDF to Word: How to Get a Document You Can Edit — Convert a text PDF to an editable Word file with headings, lists and tables; run OCR first on scans, or edit or copy the text when Word is not needed.
More PDF to Other Formats tools
- Save Every Picture from a PDF — Pick images from a gallery and save them out of the PDF, JPEGs byte-for-byte and the rest as PNG.
- PDF to a Single HTML Page — Create one self-contained HTML file, either reflowing semantic markup or an exact layout with selectable text.
- PDF to Reflowable EPUB — Turn a text-based PDF into a reflowable EPUB 3 with chapters from its bookmarks or headings, plus images.
- PDF to Multi-page TIFF — Render all pages into one multi-page LZW TIFF at 150 to 600 DPI, in colour, greyscale or black and white.
- Hear a PDF Read Out Loud — Read a PDF aloud with your device's built-in voices, choosing voice, speed and pages while sentences highlight.
- Universal File Converter — Drop any file to see what it really is and convert it — images, documents, spreadsheets, audio and video — right in your browser.