PDF Text Extractor
Pull the text out of a PDF so you can paste it somewhere useful. Line breaks are reconstructed from the layout, so the result reads as prose rather than as a jumble of fragments.
PDF Text Extractor tool
How to use the PDF Text Extractor
Add a PDF
Drop one PDF onto the upload area.
Extract the text
Press Extract Text. Each page is read in turn and the progress bar shows how far along it is.
Copy or download
Read the result on the page, copy it to your clipboard, or download it as a .txt file with optional page markers.
Where your files are processed
Your files are processed locally in your browser and are not uploaded to our servers.
The PDF Text Extractor runs as JavaScript on the page you are reading. When you choose a file, the browser hands it to that code directly — it is never put into a network request, so there is no upload to cancel, no copy sitting in a queue somewhere, and nothing for us to delete afterwards. We could not see your file if we wanted to.
You can verify this rather than take our word for it: open your browser’s developer tools, switch to the Network tab, and run the tool. You will see no request carrying your file. Better still, once the page has loaded you can disconnect from the internet entirely and the PDF Text Extractor will keep working — which it could not do if it depended on a server.
To be exact about what doesleave the page: like the rest of this site, it loads analytics, which record that a tool was opened and whether it succeeded. Those events carry the tool’s name and a duration — never a file, a file name, or anything read out of your file. The tool panel above is also excluded from session recording, so nothing shown inside it is captured either.
Frequently asked questions
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Credits
The file-processing behind this tool is adapted from DoxDock by Mithun Srinivas, used under the MIT Licence. Rebuilt here in TypeScript for this site.