Convert PDF to Text Online Free

Q: How do I extract text from a PDF online?

Drop your PDF file into the converter at the top of this page and it converts to TXT automatically. The tool parses every page of your PDF and extracts the text content directly in your browser — nothing is uploaded to any server.

Q: Can I convert a scanned PDF to text?

AllConvert extracts embedded text from PDFs. If your PDF was created from a scanner and contains only images without an embedded text layer, the extracted text may be empty. For best results, use PDFs that were created digitally or have been processed with OCR software beforehand.

Q: Does converting PDF to TXT preserve formatting?

Plain text does not support formatting like bold, italic, tables, or columns. The conversion extracts the raw text content in reading order. If you need to preserve structure, consider converting to HTML or DOCX instead.

Need to pull the text out of a PDF? AllConvert extracts readable plain text from your PDF files instantly, right in your browser. No upload, no account, no software to install. Your document never leaves your device.

Why convert PDF to plain text?

PDF files are designed for consistent visual presentation, but that makes them difficult to search, edit, or process programmatically. Extracting the text gives you a lightweight, universal format that works everywhere. Plain text files are perfect for full-text search, copying quotes into other documents, feeding content into scripts or data pipelines, and making documents accessible to screen readers. A multi-megabyte PDF often becomes just a few kilobytes of clean text.

What happens during the conversion?

AllConvert parses your PDF page by page, extracts the embedded text content, and assembles it into a single TXT file in reading order. The conversion handles multi-page documents, multiple columns, and Unicode characters. Because it runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript, your file is never sent to a remote server. There are no file size limits beyond your device's available memory.

When should you keep PDF instead?

If you need to preserve the exact visual layout, fonts, images, headers, footers, or form fields, keep the original PDF. Plain text strips away all formatting and visual elements. For documents where appearance matters — contracts, brochures, or designed reports — PDF remains the right format. But when you just need the words, TXT is far more practical.

How to convert

Drop your PDF into the converter box above, or click it to browse for the file.
Text extraction starts right away and runs entirely on your device.
When the download button appears, click it to save the extracted TXT file.

Text extraction happens locally on your device; the PDF is never sent anywhere, and it works the same on a phone or a laptop.

After a different conversion? The full converter covers 60+ format pairs

Why some PDFs extract cleanly and others don't

A PDF only gives up text if text was put into it in the first place. A file exported from Word, Google Docs or LaTeX embeds actual character data — glyphs, fonts, positions — so extraction is close to perfect. A scanned PDF is different: it's a photograph of a page dropped inside a PDF wrapper, with no character data at all, only pixels. A text extractor has nothing to pull out of that. Getting words from a scan requires OCR, software that looks at the image and guesses at characters — AllConvert doesn't do OCR, so a scanned page will come back blank or nearly empty in the TXT output.

Frequently asked questions

How do I extract text from a PDF online?
Drop the PDF into the converter on this page and it converts to TXT automatically. It parses every page and pulls out the text content right in your browser — nothing gets uploaded.

Can I convert a scanned PDF to text?
Only if it has an embedded text layer. A PDF made purely of scanned images has no text to extract, so the result will be empty — run it through OCR software first if you need text from a scan.

Does converting PDF to TXT preserve formatting?
No. Plain text can't represent bold, tables, or multi-column layout — you get the raw words in reading order. Convert to HTML or DOCX instead if structure matters.