PDF to TXT Converter
Save the words of a PDF as a .txt file that any editor, script or search tool can open. Whether that text comes out perfect depends on one thing inside your PDF: a real text layer, or only pictures of pages.
PDF Converter
or drop PDF 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.
Scanned PDFs are pictures of pages. Auto runs OCR only on pages without a text layer; On forces it for every page.
The language printed in the scan. Picking the right one noticeably improves accuracy for accents and non-Latin scripts.
Flowing text reflows into normal paragraphs that are easy to edit. Exact layout places every block where it was, which looks identical but is harder to edit.
Where detected tables go in the workbook.
Page numbers or ranges separated by commas, e.g. 1-3, 5, 8-10.
How to use this tool
- 1
Add your PDF files
Choose one PDF or up to 20 at a time, each up to 95 MB. Typed, exported and scanned documents can go in the same batch.
- 2
Check the scan settings
Convert to is already set to Plain text. If the document is a scan in a language other than English, open Advanced settings and pick it under Document language.
- 3
Convert and save
Press Convert to Plain text and download each .txt file, or all of them together as a ZIP.
If you can select a single word in your PDF viewer, the text is already inside the file and the TXT copy is exact; if the whole page highlights like a photo, OCR has to read it first.
Convert PDF to text: text layer or scanned page
A PDF exported from Word, Google Docs or a browser stores characters with their positions, so getting them out means reading them in a sensible order. A PDF from a scanner or phone camera stores only an image of each page, and its text has to be recognized. Many office PDFs mix both: a typed letter with a scanned signature page at the end.
Text recognition (OCR) decides how each page is treated. The three settings below behave differently on those kinds of files, and Auto is right for most of them.
Pages that already have a text layer are copied as they are; pages without one are recognized in the Document language you chose.
- Best for mixed files
- No accuracy loss on digital pages
Every page is recognized from its image, even if it has text. Use it when the existing text layer is broken or full of placeholder symbols.
- Fixes PDFs with unmapped fonts
- Slower on long files
Only the existing text layer is read. Scanned pages come out empty, which is useful when you want to know which pages were scans.
- Fastest
- Digital PDFs only
PDF to text converter output with garbled characters
Inside a PDF, text is a list of glyph codes for a particular font, not letters. A well-made file includes a ToUnicode map that says which code means which character. Files from some older print drivers and custom report generators leave that map out, which is why copying from them gives gibberish even though the page looks perfect. Forcing OCR is the dependable way around it, and scanned PDF to text covers the scan settings in depth.
The TXT itself is UTF-8, so accented letters, Cyrillic, Arabic, Devanagari and CJK characters survive. Right-to-left scripts are stored in reading order, which is what editors and search engines expect.
Line breaks, hyphenation, columns and headers in the TXT
Line breaks
A PDF knows lines, not paragraphs. Lines are rejoined where spacing suggests a paragraph, but poems, addresses and code listings may need a manual look.
Hyphenation
A word split as "conver-" and "sion" at a line end is usually rejoined. A real hyphen that falls at a line end, as in "well-known", can lose its hyphen, so search for it if exact wording matters.
Columns
Two-column journals are read column by column. Busy layouts with boxes or pull quotes can slip a sidebar between two paragraphs.
Headers and footers
Running titles, page numbers and confidentiality lines repeat on every page and land between pages in the TXT. A find-and-replace on the repeated line removes them in one pass.
Portable Document Format
PDF was created by Adobe in 1993 and became the open ISO 32000 standard in 2008. It fixes text, fonts, images and layout so a document looks the same on every screen and printer. PDFs can contain forms, signatures, links, attachments and searchable text, and the PDF/A variant is used for long-term archiving. The fixed layout makes PDFs hard to edit, and scanned PDFs contain only images unless OCR is applied. Every browser and operating system can open them.
- Compression
- –
- Transparency
- Yes
- Animation
- No
- Introduced
- 1993 · Adobe
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
- –
A .txt file is the lowest common denominator: data pipelines, search indexes, subtitle and translation tools and plain email all accept it, while a PDF needs a parser before anything can read its words.
Convert PDF to text free: files, sizes and languages
- PDFs per batch
- 20
- per PDF
- 95 MB
- OCR languages
- 34
- until files are deleted
- 30 min
PDF to TXT questions
How do I convert PDF to text for free without installing anything?
Upload the PDF on this page and press Convert to Plain text. There is no account and no software to install; the conversion runs on our servers and the files are deleted 30 minutes later, as described on how it works.
Why does my TXT file contain symbols like (cid:42) or boxes instead of letters?
The PDF uses a font with no table that maps its glyphs back to Unicode characters, so the shapes print fine but carry no letter meaning. Set Text recognition (OCR) to Always: OCR reads the shapes as an image and usually recovers the real words.
Can I convert only some pages of a PDF to text?
Yes. Switch Pages to convert to Selected pages and type a range such as 3-7, 12. Only those pages are read, which also speeds up long scanned files.
Why do the words fi and fl look odd after conversion?
Many typefaces draw fi, fl and ffi as a single combined glyph called a ligature. Most PDFs map it back to separate letters, but some map it to one Unicode character, such as U+FB01, which looks right on screen yet breaks a search for the plain letters. A find-and-replace in your editor fixes it.
Will the TXT file keep the page breaks?
Pages follow one another in a single file, so you do not get a separate file per page. If you need one text file per page, convert the pages in separate runs using Pages to convert.
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