Copy text from a PDF
Upload the PDF and all of its text appears page by page in a text box. From there you can copy everything with one click or save it as a .txt file — handy when copying in your PDF viewer breaks lines, jumbles columns or doesn’t work at all.
Choose files
or drag and dropPDF
Your files never leave your device — everything runs locally in your browser.
How it works
- 1
Upload the PDF
Any PDF with text.
- 2
Extract text
The text is read page by page.
- 3
Copy
Copy all text or individual pages.
- 4
Save
Optionally download as a text file.
Why copying from PDFs often fails
| Problem | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Nothing can be selected | The PDF is a scan | Run OCR first |
| Copying is blocked | Permission restrictions | Remove the restriction |
| Line breaks everywhere | PDFs store lines, not paragraphs | Extract the text here |
| Columns get mixed | Reading order of the viewer | Extract the text here |
Common uses
- Quotes for essays and papers.
- Paste text into a translator.
- Reuse passages from old documents without retyping.
Tips for clean text
Hyphenated words at line ends are joined where possible, and each page is separated clearly so you can find passages again. For multi-column layouts, check the reading order of the extracted text before quoting it.
Tips
- Scanned PDFs contain no text — use OCR for them.
- For tables, PDF to Excel works better.
- Want to keep the formatting? Use PDF to Word.
Frequently asked questions
Is formatting kept?
No, the result is plain text. For formatting, use PDF to Word.
Does it work with scanned PDFs?
Only after text recognition with OCR.
Is my PDF uploaded?
No, the text is read in your browser.