HTML to Text Converter
Saved web pages, newsletters and exported help articles are mostly markup; the words you care about are buried between tags. This converter strips the HTML and hands back a clean .txt file with only the readable text.
Document Converter
or drop PDF, DOC, DOCX … files here ·
Max 95 MB per file· Up to 20 files· Deleted after 30 minutes
Files are processed on our servers and deleted after 30 minutes.
150 DPI turns an A4 page into about 1240 × 1754 px. Use 300 for printing.
Convert the whole file or only some pages or slides (PDF and presentation input).
Pages or slides to convert, e.g. 1-3, 5, 8-10.
UTF-8 works for every language. Choose UTF-8 with BOM if Excel or Notepad on Windows shows garbled characters; legacy encodings only for old software.
LF for macOS, Linux and code editors; CRLF for older Windows programs such as classic Notepad.
Comma is standard. Use semicolon for Excel in countries that write decimals with a comma (Germany, France, Brazil).
Excel input with several sheets: convert all of them (one section or file per sheet) or only the first.
How to use this tool
- 1
Upload the HTML files
Add up to 20 .html or .htm files of up to 95 MB each, such as pages saved from a browser or exported from a CMS or email tool.
- 2
Pick encoding and line endings
Formatting is set to Text only, Text encoding to UTF-8 and Line endings to LF. Choose CRLF if the text goes into an old Windows program.
- 3
Convert and use the text
Press Convert to TXT and download one text file per page, or a ZIP for the whole batch.
What is the fastest way to turn HTML into plain text?
Upload the .html file, keep Formatting on Text only and press Convert to TXT. You get a UTF-8 text file with the readable content and none of the markup.
HTML to text: when the markup is in the way
A typical article page holds far more markup, script and styling than prose. That is fine in a browser and a problem everywhere else. Translation memories, search indexes, language-model prompts, text-analysis scripts and accessibility reviews all want the words, and every tag, inline style or tracking script that slips through becomes noise.
Copying from the browser window does not solve it either. A selection grabs menus and cookie notices, loses paragraph breaks or drags in invisible formatting when pasted. Converting the saved HTML file is repeatable, works on twenty pages at once and produces the same output every time.
If you want some structure to remain, headings and lists marked with # and -, choose HTML to Markdown instead. To go the other way and wrap plain text in markup, use TXT to HTML.
What each part of the page becomes in the TXT file
| In the HTML | In the text file |
|---|---|
| Paragraphs and headings | Blocks of text separated by blank lines |
| <br> line breaks | Line breaks |
| List items | One item per line |
| Table cells | Cell text in reading order, row by row |
| Links | The link text, without the address |
| &, é, | &, é and a non-breaking space |
| <script>, <style>, comments | Removed entirely |
| Images | Removed; pictures have no text form |
HTML
HyperText Markup Language
HTML is the markup language of the web, first described by Tim Berners-Lee in the early 1990s and now maintained by WHATWG as a living standard. An HTML file describes headings, paragraphs, links, tables, images and forms, while styling usually comes from CSS. Every browser renders it, and it is also used for email templates and saved web pages. A single HTML file often depends on external images and stylesheets, so it may look broken when moved on its own.
- Compression
- –
- Transparency
- –
- Animation
- –
- Introduced
- 1993 · Tim Berners-Lee; maintained by WHATWG
TXT
Plain text
A TXT file contains only plain characters with no formatting, fonts, images or layout. Modern text files are usually encoded in UTF-8, which covers every language, though older files may use other encodings and show garbled characters. Plain text is tiny, never becomes obsolete and opens on every device, from phones to servers. It cannot hold bold text, tables or pictures, so structure must be expressed with spacing or simple markup.
- Compression
- –
- Transparency
- –
- Animation
- –
- Introduced
- –
HTML is stripped to plain text when only the words matter: feeding an article into an analysis or translation tool, building a text corpus, writing the plain part of an email, or counting words without the markup.
From 18 tags to a living standard
How the HTML to TXT conversion works
Read the page
The file is parsed the way a browser parses it, using the charset the page declares.
Drop the markup
Tags, scripts, styles and comments go; character references turn into real characters.
Write the text
Readable text is saved in your Text encoding with your choice of Line endings.
HTML to text questions
How do I extract text from HTML without any tags left over?
Upload the file here with Formatting on Text only. Tags, attributes, scripts and style sheets are removed, and character references such as & become the characters they stand for.
Does the HTML to text converter keep link addresses?
The visible link text stays in the sentence; the URL behind it does not. If you need the addresses, convert with HTML to Markdown, which writes links as [text](url).
What causes  or ’ in text copied from a web page?
That is UTF-8 text being read as Windows-1252, a classic encoding mix-up. The converter reads the page's declared charset and writes clean UTF-8, so curly quotes and non-breaking spaces come out as the real characters.
Can I count words on a web page this way?
Yes. Converting first removes markup, code and hidden script text that inflate a raw count. Delete leftover navigation lines from the .txt, then paste it into any word counter.
Is plain text the right format for a newsletter's text version?
Yes. Many email platforms send a plain-text part alongside the HTML, and mail clients that cannot or will not render HTML show it instead. Convert the newsletter's HTML, then tidy line lengths before pasting it into the text field.