Extract Text
Pull the text layer out of a PDF and copy or save it.
About Extract Text
Extract Text pulls the text layer out of a PDF so you can copy, search or reuse it, with each page marked. Copying from a PDF reader often produces broken line breaks and lost spacing; this reads the text objects directly and normalises the whitespace.
How to use it
- Drop in the PDF.
- Click Extract text.
- Copy the result, or download it as a .txt file.
Questions
Why did it return nothing?
Your PDF is almost certainly a scan — a photograph of text rather than text itself. Pulling words out of an image requires OCR, which is not included here.
How do I tell whether a PDF has real text?
Open it in any reader and try selecting a word. If the selection highlights individual words, there is a text layer. If you can only draw a box over the page, it is an image.
Is the layout preserved?
No. You get the reading order as plain text, without columns, tables or formatting. Tables in particular come out as runs of words.
Extract Text is free and runs entirely in your browser. No account, no upload, no watermark, no limit on use.