Scanned PDF to Text Converter

Q: Why does the text from a two-column page come out mixed?

Columns are kept apart when **Text layout** is on Preserve layout, the default here. If lines from both columns still alternate, the gap between them on the scan is narrow; a cleaner scan with straight pages usually fixes it.

If you cannot highlight a single word in a PDF, it is a scan: a stack of page photos with no text inside. Upload it here and OCR reads every page back into plain text you can copy, search and edit.

or drop PDF, JPG, JPEG … files here ·

Max 95 MB per file· Up to 20 files· Deleted after 30 minutes

Output

Document language

Output

Text type

Files are processed on our servers and deleted after 30 minutes.

How to use this tool

1
Upload the scanned PDF
Add the PDF, or up to 20 of them, each up to 95 MB. Multi-page TIFF scans and single page images work as well.
2
Set the language and pages
Document language is English and Output is Plain text (.txt). Change the language for other documents, and under Advanced settings use Pages to read only a range of a long file.
3
Recognize text
Press Recognize text. Pages are straightened and turned upright first, then read in order into one text file.

Scanned PDF vs searchable PDF: why the text is missing

Image-only PDFscanned PDF · non-searchable PDF · flat PDF: A PDF whose pages are stored as pictures, typically produced by a scanner, a copier's scan-to-email function or a phone scanning app. It looks like a document, but there are no character codes inside, so nothing can be selected, searched or read aloud.

A normal PDF exported from Word or a browser contains text objects: each word is stored as characters with a font and a position, so search and copy work. A scanner skips all that and saves one image per page. To a computer, the page with your contract on it is the same kind of data as a photo of a cat.

OCR rebuilds the missing layer. The page image is cleaned up, lines and words are found, and each character shape is matched against the alphabet of the selected Document language. This page returns that result as plain text. A searchable PDF is the other common result: the scan stays visible and the recognized words are added behind it as invisible text, a rendering mode the PDF standard, ISO 32000, has always allowed.

The free Adobe Acrobat Reader can display a scan but does not run OCR; recognition is part of the paid Acrobat versions. A converter is the shortcut when you need the words once and do not want another subscription. If your scans still come out weak, our guide on how to scan documents to PDF covers scanner and phone settings.

Scan resolution for extracting text from a scanned PDF

Size	Pixels	cm	in	DPI	Fits
Letter	1700 × 2200	21.59 × 27.94	8.5 × 11	200	Large clean print only; small text gets guessed
Letter	2550 × 3300	21.59 × 27.94	8.5 × 11	300	Standard for OCR of printed pages
A4	2480 × 3508	21 × 29.7	8.27 × 11.69	300	Same detail on A4 paper
A4	3307 × 4677	21 × 29.7	8.27 × 11.69	400	Footnotes, fine print, old typewriter pages

When scanned PDF to text output goes wrong

Words come out as nonsense across a whole page
The page is probably in another language or script. Set Document language to match it, and add Also recognise for a second language on the same page.
Lines are broken mid-sentence and words end in hyphens
That follows the printed line breaks. Choose Plain text flow under Text layout for one continuous block of text; leftover hyphens need a quick find and replace.
Some pages are missing from the text file
Check that Pages is on All pages under Advanced settings. A range like 1-3 limits recognition on purpose.

PDF

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

PDF converter

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: –

TXT converter

A scanned PDF stores pictures of pages, so its words cannot be copied, searched or indexed; recognizing them into a TXT file turns the scan into text that works in an editor, a translator or a search box.

Scanned PDF to text questions

How can I tell whether my PDF is scanned or already has text?

Try to select a sentence or search for a word with Ctrl+F or Command+F. If the cursor selects the whole page like a picture and search finds nothing, it is an image-only scan and needs OCR. If words highlight normally, the text is already there and PDF to TXT extracts it exactly, with no recognition step.

Is plain text or a searchable PDF the better result?

Plain text is for reusing the words: quoting, translating, pasting into a database or an email. A searchable PDF keeps the scan's appearance and hides the text behind it, which suits archives and contracts. If you want the second, OCR PDF is set up for it.

What scan resolution gives the best text from a PDF?

300 DPI for normal printed pages. Tesseract's documentation describes accuracy falling off for text below about 10 pt at 300 DPI, so footnotes and small print benefit from 400 DPI. Going to 600 DPI rarely helps OCR and makes the PDF several times larger.

Can I extract text from a scanned PDF of a typewritten or old book page?

Usually yes. Typewriter and book type are regular printed letters, and Straighten pages corrects the tilt that often comes from scanning a bound book. Very faded pages read better with Enhance contrast turned on.

Why does the text from a two-column page come out mixed?

Columns are kept apart when Text layout is on Preserve layout, the default here. If lines from both columns still alternate, the gap between them on the scan is narrow; a cleaner scan with straight pages usually fixes it.