Convert PDF to plain text

The tool reads the text layer that the PDF already contains. A scanned document is pictures of pages and has no text layer, so nothing comes out: this tool does not recognise text in pictures (OCR). Some PDFs use fonts without a proper character map, and their text comes out as odd symbols; that is a limitation of the file, not something this tool can repair.

Words are grouped into lines by their position and lines into paragraphs by their spacing, which works well for ordinary single-column pages. Multi-column layouts, tables, footnotes and text boxes can come out interleaved. Bold, italics, images, links and tables are not kept: the output is plain UTF-8 text.

A line such as ---- Page 3 ---- before each page's text, so you can find your place in a long document. Switch them off for one continuous text.

No. The page loads a PDF engine into your browser and every operation runs on your device. You can check this yourself in the browser's network panel: after the page has loaded there are no upload requests. Closing the tab discards the file.

No. These basic tools are free, have no page or file limits set by us, and never add a watermark. The practical limit is your device's memory.

Encrypted PDFs cannot be processed here. Remove the password first, then use this tool.

Nothing you open or type. While the tab is open, the tool pages keep a short list of the steps taken in it, in the tab's session storage: the step (page opened, started, succeeded, first success, used again or failed), the tool's name, the time, how many files were used and, for a failure, an error code; never a file name, the contents of a file or your text. It holds at most the latest 200 steps, and the browser deletes it when the tab closes. The page never sends it. Where a Report a problem button is shown, you can attach the last 20 steps to your report; nothing is attached unless you tick that box. In local storage the page keeps only choices you made: a Light or Dark theme until you choose System again, the language you picked with the EN / 中文 switch if it differs from your browser's language, and this tool in your recently used list if you switched that list on at the tools page.