Extract text from a PDF
Pull the text out of a PDF and download it as a TXT or Word (.docx) file. The PDF is read entirely inside your browser and never uploaded anywhere, which matters when the document is a contract, a CV, or an invoice.
What this tool can and can't do
PDF is a layout format, not a document format — it stores where each character is drawn, not how the text is structured. That makes some things reliable and others approximate, so here is the honest picture before you rely on the output.
- Text is reconstructed from character positions: lines are grouped by vertical position, then ordered left to right. Ordinary single-column documents come out clean.
- Multi-column layouts, tables, headers, and footers are approximations. Columns can interleave and table cells lose their grid, because that structure was never stored in the file.
- Scanned PDFs contain no text at all. This tool tells you instead of downloading an empty file, but it cannot read them — that needs OCR.
- Formatting is not preserved. Bold, fonts, sizes, colors, and images are dropped; you get the words.
- Password-protected PDFs can't be opened, and are reported as such.
- Nothing is uploaded. The PDF is parsed by your own browser, including the parser's worker file, which is served from this site rather than a third-party CDN.
Frequently asked questions
Is my PDF uploaded to a server?
No. The PDF is read entirely by your own browser, and the parser's worker file is served from this site rather than a third-party CDN, so opening a document makes no request carrying your file anywhere. You can confirm it by extracting text with your network disconnected after the page has loaded.
Why is my extracted text empty?
Almost certainly because the PDF is a scan: pages stored as images, with no characters in the file to extract. This tool detects that and says so rather than downloading an empty file. Reading a scan requires OCR, which is a different technique — recognizing letters inside a picture — and this tool does not do it.
Can I get a .doc file instead of .docx?
No, and that's deliberate. The old .doc is a legacy binary format from Word 97 that isn't reasonable to generate in a browser. Some tools work around this by renaming an HTML file to .doc, which makes the file misreport its own format and can trigger a warning in Word. The .docx here is a genuine Word file, so it opens cleanly in Word, Google Docs, LibreOffice, and Pages.
Why is the text order wrong in my document?
A PDF records where each character is drawn, not the order it should be read in, so the order has to be reconstructed from position. This tool groups characters into lines by vertical position and then reads each line left to right, which handles normal documents well. Two-column layouts and tables are where it breaks down, since the file never recorded that they were columns or cells.
Is formatting kept in the DOCX?
No. You get the text as paragraphs — one per line of extracted text — without bold, fonts, sizes, colors, or images. The goal is to get the words out of a PDF and into something editable, not to rebuild the original design.
How large a PDF can I use?
Up to 100MB. The limit exists because your browser holds the whole file plus each parsed page in memory, and page count matters more than file size — a text-heavy 5MB PDF can run to thousands of pages. If yours is rejected, splitting it into parts works.