PDF to Text
Extract all text content from a PDF document, organized page by page.
Extract plain UTF-8 text from PDF documents page by page locally in your browser without uploading files.
Drop a PDF file here to extract text
Text streams will be parsed automatically in your browser
How do I use PDF to Text?
Upload a PDF file or click "Load Sample Data" to extract text from a sample multi-section PDF.
Inspect the extracted plain text with page markers, character count, and word count metrics.
Copy the extracted text to your clipboard or download it as a clean UTF-8 `.txt` file.
What features does PDF to Text offer?
High-speed client-side extraction powered by Mozilla's PDF.js runtime in your browser
Structured per-page output with clear visual demarcation headers ('--- Page N ---')
Full multi-lingual UTF-8 character encoding support for Latin, CJK, Cyrillic, and Arabic scripts
Interactive text viewer with live word count, character count, and line count telemetry
Single-click 'Copy All Text' clipboard integration and instant 'Export .txt' file download
Zero-server upload privacy architecture ensures confidential legal and medical records remain local
PDF Text Content Stream (`BT`/`ET`) & `ToUnicode` CMap Extraction
PDFs do not store paragraphs or sentences; they position individual glyph runs at $(x, y)$ transformation matrices (`Tm`, `Td`, `TJ`).
| PDF Content Operator | Internal Representation | Extractor Reconstruction Logic | Failure / Edge Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| BT ... ET | Begin / End Text Object block | Groups spatially related glyph runs | Multi-column layouts interleaved out of order |
| Tf & Tj / TJ | Font selection & kerned glyph array | Joins glyphs; inserts space when kerning offset > threshold | Missing spaces if kerning threshold miscalibrated |
| /ToUnicode CMap | Glyph ID (CID) → UTF-16BE code point | Maps custom subset font IDs back to readable Unicode | Garbled mojibake (`�`) if CMap stripped |
| Scanned /Image Only | Raster bitmap without text operators | Returns 0 chars in stream mode (requires OCR) | Use Image-to-Text (OCR) tool for scanned PDFs |
Frequently Asked Questions about PDF to Text
Why does a scanned PDF return zero characters or blank pages during text extraction?
A scanned PDF contains only flat raster images (`/Subtype /Image`) with no underlying `/Font` or `BT/ET` text operators. To extract text from scanned pages, use an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) engine.
Why do some PDFs extract as garbled symbols or missing spaces between words?
PDFs position individual characters by $(x, y)$ coordinates rather than storing literal space characters (`U+0020`). Furthermore, if the PDF creator stripped the `/ToUnicode` CMap table from subsetted fonts, Glyph IDs cannot map back to standard Unicode.
How are ligatures like `fi`, `fl`, and `ffi` handled during extraction?
Typesetters often combine `f` + `i` into a single Unicode presentation ligature (`U+FB01`: `fi`). Applying Unicode NFKC normalization decomposes ligatures back into standard searchable ASCII characters (`f` + `i`).
Is my PDF uploaded to an external server to extract the text?
No. Text extraction runs 100% locally inside your browser using Mozilla's PDF.js WebWorker parser, keeping sensitive contracts, resumes, and financial statements completely private.
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