Extract text from PDF
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Pull the text layer out of a PDF, page by page, and copy or download it as a .txt file.
the words were in there all along.
work surface
Math, not advice — results are indicative.Read the disclaimer.
most-used utilities
Notes from an article
Extract the text with page markers and paste it into your notes app.
A quote
Extract, find the paragraph, and copy just that part.
A full transcript
Download the .txt and open it in any editor.
pro tips
Keep page markers on when you need to cite a page; turn them off for a clean copy.
If the output is empty, the PDF is probably a scan. OCR is a different tool and is not included.
Copy the text rather than downloading if you only need a paragraph.
what it does
Choose a PDF and the page reads its text layer, page by page. The result appears in a text area you can copy or download as a .txt file. Page markers are optional.
It is useful for pulling a quote out of a report, turning a PDF article into notes, checking what a document actually says, or moving content into an editor without retyping it.
The text comes from the PDF's text layer, not from a photograph of the page. A born-digital PDF gives clean text; a scanned PDF usually gives nothing, because the page is an image. That is the line between extraction and OCR.
The extraction runs locally with pdf.js. The file is read into memory, the text is collected, and nothing is uploaded.
quick answers
Does this work on scanned PDFs?
Usually not. A scan has no text layer, so there is nothing to extract. OCR is required and is not part of this tool.
Is the formatting preserved?
Roughly. Paragraphs and line breaks are reconstructed from the text layer, but complex layouts and columns may need cleaning up.
Is my PDF uploaded?
No. pdf.js reads the file in your browser and the text never leaves your device.