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Extract Plain Text from a PDF

Pull the words out of a PDF into a clean .txt file you can edit, search, translate or feed to another tool. This extractor reads the document's real text layer (not a scan), rebuilds lines and paragraphs, and marks each page. It runs in your browser with zero uploads — ideal for contracts, articles, meeting notes and anything you need as plain text.

Drop your PDF here or click to browse

You can also paste from the clipboard (Ctrl+V)

Reads the PDF's text layer — for scans, use PDF OCR instead.

🔒 100% private: your files are processed by your own browser and never leave your device.

How it works

Drop your PDF into the box above (batch several files if you like).
Press Extract text. Each page's text layer is read and rebuilt locally.
Review the per-file result — one .txt per PDF, with pages clearly separated.
Download the text files.

Features

Real text layer extraction

Reads the actual embedded text — not a screenshot — so output is tiny, searchable and accurate.

Lines and pages preserved

Line breaks are reconstructed from the page layout, and each page is labeled so you can cite it.

Unicode & accents

É, ü, ñ, € and friends come through correctly (UTF-8 output).

Batch mode

Queue a folder of PDFs and get one .txt per document in a single run.

Private by design

Extraction happens in your browser. Contracts, NDAs and personal files never touch a server.

Supported formats. Accepts any .pdf. Outputs .txt (UTF-8) with one section per page.

Common use cases

Getting quotes and clauses out of contracts for review notes.
Feeding article content to editors, translators or AI tools.
Making PDF content searchable in notes apps.
Quick data reuse: copy tables of values, references or lists into spreadsheets.

Limitations (honest ones)

This tool reads text-based PDFs only — scanned pages have no text layer and produce (almost) nothing; run PDF OCR first for those. Complex layouts are flattened: multi-column articles may interleave columns, and tables become sequences of lines. Hyphenation and ligatures follow what the PDF stores internally.

Frequently asked questions

My PDF is a scan and the output is empty — why?

Scans are pictures of text. This tool reads real text layers only. Use the PDF OCR tool, which recognizes text from page images instead.

Why do two-column articles come out mixed?

Text is read in the document's internal order, which does not always match the visual column order. For most reports and letters it is perfect; for magazines, expect some shuffling.

Is the extracted text editable?

Yes — plain UTF-8 .txt opens in any editor, and pastes cleanly into Word, Docs or email.

How big a PDF can I process?

Typical documents up to a few hundred pages work in seconds or minutes, depending on your device.

Do you keep a copy of my text?

No. The extraction happens in your browser's memory and the file is saved directly to your disk.

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