How to Convert a PDF to Text (Including Scanned PDFs)

Learn how to turn any PDF into editable text for free. Covers normal PDFs, scanned PDFs that need OCR, and tips for cleaning up the result, all in your browser.

A PDF is built to look the same everywhere, which is great for sharing and awkward when you need the words inside it. Maybe you want to quote a paragraph, paste a table of notes into a document, or search a long report. This guide shows the quickest way to get clean text out of a PDF, and what to do when the usual way fails.

Step 1: Find out what kind of PDF you have

There are two kinds, and the method depends on which one you hold.

• Digital PDFs were exported from Word, Google Docs, a website or a report system. The text is stored as real characters. You can usually click and drag to select a sentence.
• Scanned PDFs come from a scanner or a phone camera. Each page is a photo of paper. You cannot select anything, and searching for a word finds nothing.

A quick test: open the file and try to highlight one sentence. If it highlights, it is digital. If you only get a box around the whole page, it is scanned.

Step 2: Extract the text from a digital PDF

1. Open the PDF to Text converter.
2. Drop your PDF into the upload box, or click it to choose a file.
3. The text appears in an editable box straight away.
4. Click Copy text to paste it into Word or Google Docs, or download it as a .txt file.

Step 3: Use OCR for a scanned PDF

If the box comes back empty or the file is clearly a scan, click Run OCR on this PDF. OCR looks at each page image and works out which letters are on it. It takes longer than normal extraction, because every page has to be analysed. The first run also needs a moment to load the language data. Longer documents take more time, so be patient with a 50-page scan.

For the best results with scans:

• Scan at a decent resolution. Around 300 DPI is a common sweet spot for text.
• Keep pages straight and well lit. Shadows and tilted pages cause mistakes.
• Prefer black text on a plain light background. Coloured backgrounds and busy patterns reduce accuracy.
• Expect to proofread. OCR is good, not perfect, especially with small print, stamps and handwriting.

Step 4: Clean up the result

Raw extracted text often has quirks you can fix in a minute:

• Broken lines. Text copied from columns may break in the middle of sentences. Join them by hand or with find-and-replace.
• Hyphenated words. A word split across two lines in the original can appear as two pieces.
• Page numbers and headers. Repeated headers show up on every page. Delete them in one pass.
• Look-alike characters. OCR can confuse O and 0, or l and 1. Check numbers, names and dates carefully.

When plain text is not what you need

Text extraction drops fonts, columns, tables and pictures. If you only want to change a name or a date inside the PDF, use the PDF editor instead. If you need each page as a picture, use PDF to Image. And if your source is a photo rather than a PDF, the Image to Text tool does the same job and supports several languages, including Urdu.

A note on privacy

Contracts, ID cards and bank statements are exactly the files people convert. Docsworker processes the file inside your own browser, so it is not sent to a server for conversion. You can read more in Are Online PDF Tools Safe?

Frequently asked questions

Keep reading

• How to Extract Text from an Image (OCR), Including Urdu
• How to Edit a PDF Online for Free (Without Adobe Acrobat)

Related tools: Image to Text (OCR) · PDF Editor