About PDF to Text
Extracting the words from a PDF gives you plain text you can search, quote, count or paste elsewhere, without the layout coming along for the ride.
How to use it
- Upload the PDF.
- Extract the text.
- Copy or download the result.
Worth knowing
Extraction reads the text layer that is already in the file. Columns, headers and footers come out in reading order rather than visual order, so multi-column pages often need a tidy-up.
Common questions
- Nothing came out — why?
- The PDF is almost certainly a scan: an image of a page with no text layer to read.
- Is formatting kept?
- No, and that is the point. You get the words; bold, tables and columns are not preserved.