Extract All Text from a PDF File
Get the plain text content of your PDF - all characters, paragraphs, and words - in a simple .txt file. Useful for copying text from a protected view, feeding PDF content into search indexes, or processing document data programmatically.
How it works
- Upload your PDF.
- Text appears automatically. Scanned pages run OCR in your browser (the first time may take longer while language data loads).
- Copy the text or download it as a .txt file.
Tips for best results
- Text extraction preserves reading order where possible, but complex multi-column layouts may mix paragraph order.
- Image-only or scanned PDFs have no text layer; this tool runs OCR on those pages in your browser (French, English, and Arabic trained models). Very large PDFs only OCR the first 25 pages.
- Headers, footers, and page numbers are included in the extracted text.
Frequently asked questions
- Will formatting (bold, italic) be preserved?
- No - plain text extraction removes formatting. Only the raw characters are output.
- Can I extract text from a password-protected PDF?
- If the PDF is locked for content copying, extraction will fail. Unlock it first.
- Why is OCR slow the first time?
- The OCR engine and language data load from a CDN into your browser. Later uses on the same device are usually faster.