FileTools

PDF to text

Extract selectable PDF text into a UTF-8 text file.

How it works

  • Choose or drop your files
  • Select “Extract text” and let your browser process it
  • Review the result and download it to your device

Why use FileTools for pdf to text?

Extract the existing text layer from a PDF into a plain UTF-8 file. The tool groups words into lines, keeps page separators, and provides a text preview before download, making it useful for searching and reusing written content.

Best suited for

Copying report text, making searchable notes, and moving paragraphs into another editor.

Input and output

Input: One PDF with selectable text, up to 50 MB and 100 selected pages.

Output: A UTF-8 .txt document with page markers and the extracted text in reading order.

Known limitation

Scanned images contain no text layer and require OCR, which this tool does not provide. Multi-column reading order, unusual fonts, and tables may need manual cleanup.

Practical tips

  • Try selecting a sentence in a PDF reader first to check whether a text layer exists.
  • If a page is a scan, use PDF to Word in appearance mode to retain a visual copy instead.