Extract text from a PDF

Recover the written content of a PDF as a plain text file. This tool reads characters already present in the document; it does not recognize letters in page images. For a report exported from a word processor, direct extraction avoids a slower OCR pass that might introduce recognition errors. Choose relevant pages before copying or downloading the result.

Text fragments are grouped into lines using their positions on each page. Lines follow an estimated reading order, with a blank line between pages. UTF-8 output preserves the characters actually supplied by the text layer.

The preview and TXT download contain the same text. Inspect the preview before pasting into another application. Changing the page selection clears it; run extraction again to match the new selection.

PDFs position fragments rather than necessarily storing logically ordered paragraphs. Columns, sidebars, footnotes or poorly encoded fonts may therefore produce mixed lines or incorrect characters. Check a representative sample, particularly numbers and references.

Plain text does not retain images, page layout or interactive links. Table text is not a structured spreadsheet: choose CSV or Excel for that purpose. Markdown is more suitable when an approximate representation of headings and paragraphs is useful.