Extract Text from a PDF
Pull the text out of a PDF so you can edit, search or quote it. Lines are rebuilt from the text positions on each page, and you can view one page or the whole document.
How to extract text from a PDF
- Choose a PDF (enter its password if it is protected).
- Select Extract text and wait while each page is read.
- Show all pages combined (with optional page separators) or pick a single page.
- Copy the text or download it as a .txt file.
Supported formats
- Input
- Output
- Plain text (.txt)
- Maximum size
- 200 MB per file (limited by your device's memory)
Why some PDFs return no text
A PDF can store text as real characters or as a picture of the page. Documents exported from Word, browsers or accounting software contain real text, which this tool extracts. Scanned paper documents and photographed pages are images: there are no characters to read, so the result is empty. Recognising text in images requires OCR (optical character recognition), which this tool does not offer. You can confirm a file is a scan by trying to select text in your PDF viewer. Once you have the text, the Word Counter can analyse it.
Benefits
- Line breaks and paragraph gaps are reconstructed from text positions instead of one long run-on string.
- Per-page view makes it easy to copy just the part you need.
- Works with password-protected PDFs after you unlock them locally.
Limitations
- No OCR: scanned or image-only pages produce no text.
- Multi-column layouts, tables and footnotes may come out in a different reading order than they appear.
- Text drawn with fonts that lack a Unicode mapping can extract as unreadable characters.
Privacy and security
Text is extracted by PDF.js, which parses the PDF in a Web Worker in your browser. The document and the extracted text never leave your device.
Read our privacy policy for details about the site as a whole.
Frequently asked questions
Can this tool read scanned PDFs?
No. Scanned pages are images, and turning images into text needs OCR, which isn't available here. The tool will tell you when pages contain no text.
Why are some words joined together or split apart?
PDFs store text as positioned fragments, not words. Spaces are inferred from the gaps between fragments, which works well for most documents but can misjudge tightly or unusually spaced text.
Is formatting such as bold or tables preserved?
No. The output is plain text: fonts, colours and table structure are not kept, only the characters and line breaks.