Guides

Short, plain answers about getting the text out of a PDF: extracting and copying it, saving a TXT file, why text can come out jumbled, and why a scanned PDF has no text to extract.

• Extract text from a PDF without retyping it

  Pull the selectable text out of a PDF, then copy it or save it as a TXT file. The PDF is read in your browser and is not uploaded to app.zone's servers.

• Convert a PDF to a plain TXT file

  Save the text of a PDF as a plain .txt file in UTF-8, named after the original PDF. Pages are kept apart with a page break, ready for any text editor.

• Copy text from a PDF, all pages or just one

  Copy the text of a whole PDF in one go, or just one page, without broken lines and jumbled order from selecting text in a viewer by hand.

• Why PDF text comes out jumbled, and what you can do

  Columns, tables, headers, hyphens, right-to-left lines, broken font mapping and text drawn as shapes: why extracted PDF text can look odd, and what to expect.

• Scanned PDFs, text layers and OCR

  Why a scanned PDF often has no text to extract, how OCR differs from reading a text layer, and what PDF to Text can and cannot do with a scan.