# Convert PDF to Text

Get the words out of a PDF to quote, translate, search, or paste into a document or an AI tool. Download a .txt file or copy everything at once.

_Source: https://sharelargefilesfree.com/tools/pdf-to-text · Updated 2026-09-29_

## How to use it

1. Choose or drop one or more PDFs.
2. Choose one text file, or one per page, and which pages.
3. Press Extract text.
4. Copy the text from the preview, or download or send the .txt file.

## Which PDFs work

PDFs made by a computer (exported from Word or Google Docs, saved from a browser, e-books, invoices, bank statements) contain their text, and it is extracted exactly. Scanned PDFs are pictures of pages: they contain no text to extract, and reading them needs OCR (optical character recognition). The result tells you which pages had no text; run those through the free [OCR PDF](https://sharelargefilesfree.com/tools/ocr-pdf) tool, which recognises the words and can also give you a searchable PDF.

## What the text file looks like

- Plain UTF-8 text, so accents and non-Latin scripts come out correctly.
- Lines follow the lines on the page; each page can start with a “--- Page 3 ---” marker.
- Formatting such as bold, fonts, images and tables is not kept: tables become text separated by spaces.
- Multi-column layouts are read in the order the PDF stores them, which is usually column by column.

## Private documents stay private

Contracts, statements and medical letters are processed by your browser with pdf.js, the PDF engine used by Firefox, and never uploaded. For a picture of each page instead, use [PDF to JPG](https://sharelargefilesfree.com/tools/pdf-to-jpg); to pull out a few pages as a new PDF, use [Extract pages](https://sharelargefilesfree.com/tools/extract-pages).

## Frequently asked questions

### How do I extract text from a PDF?

Add the PDF and press Extract text. Copy the text from the preview or download it as a .txt file.

### Why is my text file empty?

The PDF is probably scanned: its pages are images. Run it through the free OCR PDF tool, which recognises the text.

### Does it keep the formatting?

No. You get plain text with line breaks; fonts, images and layout are not kept.

### Can I get one file per page?

Yes. Choose “One file per page”, then save or send only the pages you need.

### Is my PDF uploaded?

No. The text is extracted on your device.