PDF to Text Converter: Extract Text From PDF

Convert PDF to text when you only need the words, not the design. Copying text out of a PDF reader page by page is slow, and it gets tedious across many pages.

FileKiwi reads every page and gives you all the text at once. Download it as a .txt file, or copy it straight to your clipboard to paste into an email, a note, a spreadsheet or a translation tool. Everything runs in your browser, so the PDF stays on your device.

How to use PDF to Text

Open the PDF

Drag your PDF onto the page or tap to choose it from your device or a cloud folder.

Extract the text

FileKiwi reads the text from every page inside your browser. Short documents take only a moment.

Copy or download

Press copy to put all the text on your clipboard, or download it as a plain .txt file.

Why use FileKiwi for this

All pages at once

No more selecting and copying page by page. The full text of the document is extracted in one go.

Clipboard ready

One click copies everything, so you can paste it into a chat, an AI assistant, a doc or a search box.

Plain and portable

A .txt file opens on any device and is tiny, which makes it easy to search, store or share.

Stays private

The PDF is read in your browser, so the document is never uploaded to a server.

Handy ways to use PDF to text

Quoting and research: grab passages from papers, reports or ebooks without retyping them.
Translation: paste the text of a foreign language letter or manual into a translation tool.
Summaries: feed the text of a long document into an AI assistant or note app.
Search and archive: keep a lightweight .txt copy of statements, terms or manuals that is easy to search.
Data cleanup: move numbers or lists from a PDF into a spreadsheet, then tidy them up.

Because the output is plain text, all formatting such as fonts, colors, images and table borders is dropped. Only the characters remain, which is often exactly what you want.

Text vs Word: which tool do you need?

	PDF to Text	PDF to Word
Output	.txt file or clipboard	.docx file
Formatting	None, plain characters	Paragraphs and page breaks
Best for	Pasting, searching, translating	Editing and reworking a document

If you plan to rewrite the document and send it back, choose PDF to Word. If you just need the words somewhere else, plain text is faster.

Why some PDFs give no text

A scanned PDF is a set of photos of paper pages. There are no letters inside it for a computer to read, only pixels. Text extraction needs OCR for those files, which FileKiwi does not offer yet.

To check, try to highlight a word in your PDF reader. If you can, the text will extract. If the PDF is mixed and only some pages are scanned, you will get text from the other pages. You can also save the scanned pages as images with PDF to PNG to read them on screen.

Text based PDFs exported from an app or website give the best results.

PDF to Text: frequently asked questions

How do I convert PDF to text?

Drop your PDF onto FileKiwi. The text of every page is extracted in your browser, and you can copy it to the clipboard or download it as a .txt file. It is free and needs no account.

Why is the extracted text empty?

The PDF is probably scanned, so each page is a picture rather than real text. Reading those pages needs OCR, which FileKiwi does not provide yet. Text based PDFs, like ones exported from Word, work well.

Is my PDF uploaded?

No. Extraction happens inside your browser and the file stays on your device. Nothing is sent to FileKiwi, so it is fine to use with private letters, contracts or statements.

Will tables and columns come out correctly?

Plain text cannot hold table borders or column layout, so table cells come out as lines of text. You may need to tidy the result, for example when pasting numbers into a spreadsheet.

Can I extract text from a PDF on my phone?

Yes. Open the tool in Safari or Chrome, choose the PDF and press copy. You can paste the text into notes, email or a messaging app right away, or save the .txt file.