How to Extract Text from a PDF Online and Save a TXT File

1. Check whether the PDF contains selectable text

Open the PDF in a reader and try selecting a sentence with your cursor. If you can highlight individual words, the page contains selectable text and is a good candidate for extraction. If the page behaves like one large picture, it may be a scan; an ordinary text extractor cannot read words that exist only as pixels.

Some PDFs mix selectable text with scanned pages. In that case, the output may contain text from some pages but little or nothing from the image-only pages. Identify those pages before relying on the extracted file.

2. Extract text with PDFora

Open the PDF to Text page and choose the source PDF from your device. Start the extraction and wait for processing to finish. Download the TXT file and open it in a text editor to review the extracted wording.

Keep the original PDF beside the TXT output. The text file is intended for reading and reuse; it does not preserve page styling, exact spacing, images or the full visual structure of the source document.

1. Choose a PDF that contains selectable text.
2. Upload it on the PDF to Text page.
3. Run the extraction and download the TXT file.
4. Open the text file and compare important passages with the original PDF.

3. Review reading order and formatting

PDFs store text at positions on a page rather than as a normal word-processing document. A multi-column page, table, sidebar or footnote may therefore be extracted in an order that differs from how a person reads the page. Check headings, paragraphs, numbered lists, columns and table values before copying the text elsewhere.

Line breaks may appear at the end of visual lines, while headers and footers may be mixed into the main text. Search for missing punctuation, unusual symbols, broken words and characters that have been substituted by the source font.

4. Know the limits of text extraction

A TXT file contains text, not the original page design. Images, charts, diagrams, handwriting, stamps and signatures are not converted into editable text by this workflow. Scanned pages require OCR, and OCR output should be proofread because similar characters, decimal points and punctuation can be misread.

If you need editable paragraphs and some document structure, PDF to Word may be a better next step. If you need web markup, PDF to HTML may suit a different workflow. Choose the format based on what you plan to do with the content.

5. Protect the source document and extracted text

Extracted text can contain names, addresses, account details, contract terms or other private information from the original PDF. Upload only files you are authorised to process and review the site's privacy information before using an online tool for sensitive records.

Before sharing the TXT file, compare important passages with the source and remove any content that the recipient should not receive. Keep the original PDF until the extracted text has been checked and saved where it belongs.

Frequently asked questions