tooloctopus.

PDF to text converter

Get the text out of a PDF to copy, edit or search, page by page.

Privacy: runs in your browser

This tool processes your input in this browser. Inputs and results are excluded from analytics. Recent tools save tool names, visit counts and last-visit times. Favorites store only tool names. Draft saving is optional and stays on this device; delete saved text with the draft controls. Loading text from a URL is optional and contacts that server; its URL and your IP address are visible to the server. When a button sends your result to another tool, it waits in this tab until that tool opens it, for up to a minute, and is then deleted.

Copy link includes the inputs you choose to share in the address. Anyone with that link can reopen them. Files and generated results are excluded. Password and key tools share settings only.

Language: English

Or drop it here. It is read on this device and never uploaded.

No PDF chosen yet.

Leave empty for every page, or write pages like 2, 5-7.

The text

The text appears here.

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Keyboard shortcuts

Sharing and starting over

A copied link includes what you entered and your settings, so anyone with it can see them. Leave private text out. Files and results are not included; random draws are made again.

Start over puts the tool back to its starting values and closes any open file or device. Drafts you saved stay on this device until you delete them.

How to get the text out of a PDF

Choose the PDF and, if you need only some pages, type them or tap them. The text appears page by page, ready to copy, to download as a plain .txt file or to count.

The text is read from the PDF itself by PDF.js, the PDF reader built into Firefox, in the order the file stores it; columns and tables come out as lines of text, not as a layout.

A scanned page is a picture of text with no text in it, so it comes out empty and the tool names those pages; turning pictures of text into text needs OCR, which this tool does not do.

Next: Word counter

Worked example

A 10-page report with 2-3 typed in the pages box gives the text of those two pages, each after a line such as “— Page 2 —”.

Before you rely on the result

One PDF of up to 200 MB at a time. Only text stored as text comes out: scanned pages, text inside pictures and the few PDFs that keep their letters as drawings give nothing. A PDF locked with a password has to be unlocked first. Nothing is uploaded.

Next: PDF to JPG

Cite this page

ToolOctopus. “PDF to text converter.” Updated 2026-10-12. https://tooloctopus.com/pdf-to-text.

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Citation formatting uses citeproc-js by Frank Bennett and Citation Style Language styles. License and source code.

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