Extracting Text from PDFs
Need text out of a PDF without copying page by page? This does it for you, pulling all text and presenting it in clean, organized format. Whether you need to extract for editing, analysis, or repurposing, makes it simple.
Prep
Get your PDF ready:
- Have it accessible on computer, phone, or cloud
- Works with standard PDFs and scanned/image-based docs
- Ensure you have rights to extract text
- Larger files take longer but fully supported
Upload
Start extraction:
- Click "Select PDF File" or drag-and-drop
- Choose from any location on device
- Accepts standard PDFs up to 200MB
- Upload progress shows percentage
- Filename and size displayed after upload
Extraction Options
Customize how text is extracted:
- Extraction mode - all pages, page range, or specific pages
- Text processing - preserve formatting, remove hyphens, or clean whitespace
- OCR options - for scanned PDFs, enable to convert images to text
- Format preservation - maintain paragraph breaks, headings, structure
Start Extraction
One click:
- Click "Extract Text from PDF"
- Standard PDFs extract instantly
- Scanned docs with OCR take a moment
- Progress indicators show page processing
Different PDF Types
Handles various formats:
- Standard PDFs - direct and accurate extraction
- Scanned PDFs - OCR reads text from images
- Password-protected - can't extract unless password removed first
- Multi-language - supports various languages with proper encoding
- Image-heavy - skips images, focuses on text
Results
Once done:
- View text in clean preview pane
- Page-by-page breakdown with word counts
- Document statistics and analysis
- Search functionality to find specific content
- Adjust text size and formatting for readability
Analysis
Get insights:
- Word count - total words and characters
- Reading time - estimated time to read
- Keyword analysis - most frequently used words
- Language detection - identify document language
- Page statistics - words per page and distribution
Export
Save extracted text multiple ways:
- Copy to clipboard - quick copy for pasting elsewhere
- Download as TXT - plain text file
- Download as JSON - structured data with metadata
- Download as Markdown - formatted text with headings
- Share options when available
Scanned PDFs
For image-based docs:
- OCR activates automatically
- Accuracy depends on scan quality
- Handles mixed text and images
- Preserves layout where possible
- Supports multiple languages
Advanced Features
More capabilities:
- Search & highlight - find terms and highlight matches
- Page selection - extract only from specific pages
- Format cleanup - remove extra spaces and line breaks
- Text analysis - insights about content
- Batch processing - extract from multiple files (if supported)
Tips
Best results:
- Use clear, high-quality PDFs
- For scanned docs, ensure good contrast and legibility
- Choose appropriate extraction options
- Check accuracy, especially with OCR
- Save different export formats for different uses
Uses
Perfect for:
- Content repurposing - extract to reuse in other docs
- Data analysis - pull text for research
- Accessibility - make content available for screen readers
- Editing - extract when original source unavailable
- Translation - extract for translation
- Archive searching - make old scanned docs searchable
Privacy
Docs handled securely:
- Files processed locally when possible
- Uploaded files deleted after processing
- No storage of your docs on servers
- Secure encryption during transfer
- Private processing with no data sharing
For standard PDFs with selectable text, extraction is instant and accurate. For scanned PDFs or image-based docs, built-in OCR reads text from images and converts to editable format. Means you can extract from old scanned documents, photos of text, or any PDF where text isn't normally selectable. Extracted text maintains paragraphs, headings, basic formatting, making it ready for editing, analysis, or repurposing. Like having a digital assistant who reads through your PDF and gives you all text content in workable form.