How to Extract Text from a PDF Online (Convert PDF to TXT)
Need the raw text content from a PDF without images or formatting? Extract clean, plain text for data processing, analysis, or copy-paste.
You need the text from a 200-page PDF report. Not the layout. Not the images. Not the fonts. Just the raw text content — clean, searchable, and ready for processing.
Maybe you are feeding it into a search engine index. Maybe you are running text analysis. Maybe you just need to copy the content into another document without fighting PDF formatting.
Our free PDF to Text tool strips out everything except the text and saves it as a clean .txt file.
How to Convert
- Upload: Go to the PDF to Text tool and upload your PDF(s). Batch upload is supported.
- Convert: Click "Convert." The engine extracts all text content while preserving reading order.
- Download: Save your .txt file(s).
What Gets Extracted
- Body text: All readable text from every page.
- Headers and footers: Page titles and running headers.
- Table text: Text within table cells (column structure may not be preserved in plain text).
What Does NOT Get Extracted
- Images, charts, and graphics.
- Formatting (bold, italic, colors, fonts).
- Page layout and positioning.
Common Use Cases
- Data Scientists: Extract text for NLP pipelines, sentiment analysis, or text mining.
- Search Engineers: Index PDF content for enterprise search systems.
- Developers: Pull text content for automated processing scripts.
- Students: Extract quotes and references from research papers for notes.
Important: Scanned PDF Files
If your PDF is a scanned image (you cannot select text by clicking and dragging), the text extraction will be empty. You need to run PDF OCR first to create a text layer, then extract.
Secure & Private
Files are processed securely and deleted within one hour.
Get the text you need without the formatting baggage. Convert PDF to TXT.
Ready to try it yourself?
Use our free PDF to Text tool to handle your documents now.