PDF to Text
Convert PDF to Text Online
Extract plain text with its layout, with OCR on offer for scanned pages, privately in your browser.
- Runs in your browser
- Nothing uploaded
- No sign-up
- Free, no daily limits
- 1Add your file
- 2Choose settings
- 3Download
100% Private: All processing happens in your browser. Your files never leave your device.
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TryDocsy's PDF to TXT converter extracts selectable text from PDF documents and generates clean, unformatted plain text (.txt) files directly in your web browser. When you need to copy extensive text, parse information for automated scripts, or feed documentation into language models, converting to plain text eliminates layout artifacts and font formatting.
Unlike cloud converters that upload your files to remote servers, TryDocsy processes everything client-side using WebAssembly and Mozilla's pdf.js engine. Your financial reports, personal correspondence, and proprietary notes remain securely on your computer. You can choose between preserving visual column alignment with monospaced space padding or reflowing wrapped paragraphs into continuous lines.
How it works
1. Choose your PDF document
Under 'Drop a PDF here', select a text-based PDF up to 100 MB. The tool immediately detects the file size, document name, and total page count.
2. Select your layout mode
Under 'Text layout', choose 'Keep layout' if you want tables and columns padded with spaces for monospaced viewing, or select 'Reflow paragraphs' to merge wrapped lines into continuous sentences.
3. Configure page separators
Toggle the checkbox for 'Add --- Page N --- headings'. Keep it enabled to track pagination in long reports, or disable it if you need clean, continuous text for coding or data analysis.
4. Extract, copy, or download
Click 'Extract Text'. Once extraction finishes, preview the text in the editor, click 'Copy All' to copy it to your clipboard, or click 'Download .txt File' to save it.
When you'd use it
Feeding document contents into LLM prompts and AI workflows
Large language models and coding assistants process plain text much faster and more reliably than raw PDF binaries. Extracting clean .txt eliminates binary overhead and formatting noise.
Parsing tabular statements and invoices with shell scripts
Financial analysts and software developers can extract text with 'Keep layout' enabled to preserve column spacing, allowing command-line tools like grep, awk, or Python to parse figures.
Reading long articles and manuals in lightweight terminal editors
Engineers working in remote server terminals can convert dense PDF manuals into .txt files to read with terminal pagers like less or text editors like Vim and Nano.
Extracting readable content for accessibility and screen readers
Complex multi-column PDF layouts often confuse accessibility screen readers. Converting to plain text flattens text into natural reading order for assistive speech engines.
Visual coordinate sorting versus raw stream extraction
Many basic text extractors simply read characters in the internal order in which they were written to the PDF content stream. In many documents, especially those generated by desktop publishing software, content stream order jumps between headers, footers, sidebars, and body copy, producing garbled paragraphs.
TryDocsy's parser reads exact two-dimensional coordinates for each text token. It clusters glyphs into visual lines based on font-relative vertical tolerances, respects hard end-of-line breaks, and properly handles right-to-left text directionality. This ensures that text appears in natural reading sequence from top to bottom and left to right.
Understanding the difference between Keep Layout and Reflow
Selecting 'Keep layout' calculates the horizontal position of every word relative to the page margin and inserts corresponding ASCII spaces. This is ideal for invoices, bank statements, pricing sheets, and multi-column tables because numbers and labels remain aligned under their respective headers when viewed in a monospaced font.
Conversely, 'Reflow paragraphs' identifies soft line wraps within paragraphs and stitches words into single, unbroken lines. This mode is specifically optimized for prose, novels, legal briefs, and essays where you want natural text reflow without artificial line breaks in the middle of sentences.
When choosing between text formats, consider PDF to Markdown. While PDF to Text yields unformatted character streams, PDF to Markdown reconstructs structured headings, bullet points, and GFM pipe tables for Obsidian and Notion wikis.
OCR for scanned pages
When a PDF consists of image scans, camera snapshots, or flattened raster pages, standard font stream parsers find no selectable text glyphs.
Rather than leaving those pages blank or halting, the tool detects scanned and garbled pages and shows an in-place OCR panel. You can select your recognition language and model (AI, Accurate, or Fast), and the engine extracts plain text or aligned layouts right in your browser.
Measured benchmark results: mock report test
In our test run, we converted our mock operational report (sample-report.pdf, 2,499 bytes) using Keep Layout mode. The tool extracted a 584-byte plain text file (output-pdf-to-txt.txt) containing 10 formatted lines.
When evaluated against our scanned sample (sample-scanned.pdf, 921 bytes), extraction yielded 0 characters and triggered the scanned document OCR prompt. For a complete comparison of text extraction fidelity, consult our document conversion fidelity matrix.
Frequently asked questions
How does 'Keep layout' differ from 'Reflow paragraphs'?
'Keep layout' inserts space padding to maintain the visual position of columns and tables, making it perfect for invoices and data sheets. 'Reflow paragraphs' joins wrapped lines into single continuous sentences, making it ideal for books and prose.
What is the difference between PDF to Text and PDF to Markdown?
PDF to Text outputs raw unformatted ASCII or UTF-8 text with space padding or reflow. PDF to Markdown parses typographic font sizes into Markdown headings (# through ###) and detects aligned cells to build GitHub Flavored Markdown tables.
Can I extract text from scanned PDFs or photos?
Yes. The extractor detects pages lacking selectable text and offers built-in OCR. You can select your language and recognition model to extract clean text without uploading anything to a server.
What does the 'Add --- Page N --- headings' setting do?
When enabled, the extractor inserts a header before the text of each page (e.g., '--- Page 1 ---') to help you track document structure. Turning it off outputs clean, continuous text suitable for automated data scripts.
What is the file size limit for PDF to Text?
The tool accepts PDF documents up to 100 MB. Parsing occurs entirely in your browser memory without uploading bytes to an external server.