PDF to text
Extract the plain text of a PDF into a TXT file.
Drop your file here
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Accepted formats: PDF
Your limits for this tool
- Up to 50 MB per file
- Unlimited pages
- One file at a time
- 10 operations left today
- Free, no watermark, instant download
- Processed on our servers, then deleted automatically
How it works
- 1
Drop your file
- 2
Adjust the options
- 3
Download the result
Sometimes you just want the words. This tool extracts the plain text of a PDF into a TXT file you can paste into an email, a note-taking app or a translation draft. It's handy for quoting a passage from a report, pulling the content of an article for study notes, or feeding text into another program without any formatting in the way.
Choose whether to keep the original layout, with columns and spacing roughly preserved, or to get continuous text that reads line after line. Extraction runs on our servers, then your file is deleted automatically and the TXT is offered through a temporary download link. For scanned PDFs, run OCR first, since a scan contains images rather than text.
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Frequently asked questions
- Can I keep the columns of my PDF in the text file?
- Yes. The keep layout option preserves columns and spacing as closely as plain text allows.
- Why is my TXT file empty?
- Your PDF is probably a scan, which contains images rather than text. Run our OCR tool first, then extract the text.
- Is my document stored after extraction?
- No. It is processed on our servers and deleted automatically, and the TXT is downloadable via a temporary link.