PDF to Text Extractor
Pull the selectable text out of any PDF — articles, reports, ebooks, contracts — and copy it or download it as a plain .txt file. Your PDF is processed entirely in your browser and is never uploaded to a server.
Processed locally — your file never leaves your device
Get the Text Out of Any PDF
PDFs are great for sharing documents that look the same everywhere, but getting the text back out — to quote, translate, search, or reuse — is often a pain. This extractor reads the PDF's built-in text layer and gives you clean, copyable text in seconds, all without installing software or uploading your file anywhere.
How It Works
The tool uses pdf.js, the same PDF engine that powers Firefox's viewer, to read your document directly in the browser. It walks every page, collects the text items, and reconstructs the reading order with line breaks. You can optionally insert a ===== Page N ===== separator so you know where each page begins.
Searchable vs. Scanned PDFs
This tool extracts real, selectable text. If your PDF was created from a word processor, web page, or export, that text is there and comes out cleanly. If your PDF is a scan — essentially photos of pages — there's no text layer to extract, and you'll see an empty result. Those documents need OCR (optical character recognition), which is a different process.
Common Uses
- Quoting & research — grab a passage from a report or paper without retyping it.
- Reusing content — move text from an old PDF into a new document or CMS.
- Translation & accessibility — paste extracted text into a translator or screen-reader-friendly format.
- Data capture — pull a list or table's text for cleanup in a spreadsheet.
Privacy
Everything happens in your browser. Your PDF and its text are never sent to a server, so it's safe for confidential contracts, financial documents, and private files.