How to extract text from a PDF
- Choose your PDF — the text is extracted automatically.
- Optionally enter page numbers, like
2-4, to extract only some pages. - Click Copy text or Download .txt.
Tips
- Join broken lines merges lines that were split only because of the page width, so paragraphs paste neatly into Word or an email.
- Tables are extracted row by row as plain text; columns may need tidying.
- Count the words in the result with the word counter, or change capitalisation with the case converter.
Why is no text found?
If the PDF is a scan or a photo of a document, it contains only pictures of text — there is no real text inside to extract. Such files need OCR (optical character recognition) — use our free Image to Text (OCR) tool, which also reads scanned PDFs. Digitally created PDFs — bank statements, e-tickets, reports, e-books — work well.
Want the pages as pictures instead? Use PDF to JPG.