You've got a PDF with important text. But you can't copy it — either the PDF has restrictions, or it's a scan, or you just want to extract the text without the formatting.
When to use PDF to Text
- Content repurposing: Extract text to use in a blog post, presentation, or email.
- Text analysis: Analyze the text for keywords, frequency, or sentiment.
- Translation: Extract text to paste into a translation tool.
- Accessibility: Make text available for screen readers.
How to extract text
- Open PDFly's PDF to Text tool.
- Upload your PDF.
- Click process — the tool extracts all the text.
- Download the .txt file or copy the text directly.
What about scanned PDFs?
If your PDF is a scan, you'll need OCR first to recognize the text.
What gets extracted?
- Text: All the words from the PDF, in reading order.
- Structure: Paragraph breaks and basic line breaks are preserved.
Need to extract text from a PDF?
Convert PDF to Text in seconds — no uploads, no signup.
Open PDF to Text ToolFrequently Asked Questions
Does PDF to Text work with scanned PDFs?
If the PDF is a scan, you'll need OCR first.
Will the text be in the correct order?
The tool tries to extract text in reading order. For simple documents, it works well.
Can I extract text from password-protected PDFs?
You'll need to unlock the PDF first.