How to use PDF to Text

Reuse the existing text in a PDF for notes, searching or plain-text editing.

Open PDF to Text · Read the guide

How to: step-by-step

Select the PDF.
Choose all pages, selected pages or a range.
Extract the text and review the result.
Save or copy the available text output, then compare important passages against the PDF.

Tips for better results

Try selecting a sentence in a PDF reader first; a scan may have no text layer.
Check the order of multi-column text and tables.

Common pitfalls

This tool does not recognize letters inside images. Use OCR PDF for scans.
Unusual font encodings can produce broken Telugu or other characters.

Worked example

Example: a two-column newsletter may extract as interleaved lines. Compare the first paragraph of each column with the source. If no text appears because the page is scanned, run OCR first; changing the filename or repeating extraction will not create missing text.

Before you finish