📋 PDF Text Extractor
Upload a PDF and extract all readable text from every page using PDF.js. Useful for copying text from scanned or locked PDFs.
Loads PDF.js from CDN to extract text client-side. Your file never leaves your browser.
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How to Use the PDF Text Extractor
The PDF Text Extractor pulls readable text from any PDF file and displays it as plain text you can copy, search, or process further. Click Select PDF File and choose a PDF from your device. The tool dynamically loads PDF.js (Mozilla's open-source PDF rendering library) from a CDN on first use. PDF.js reads the file from memory, extracts the text content from each page, and displays it in the output box with page markers (e.g., --- Page 1 ---). Click Copy to copy all extracted text to your clipboard.
This tool is useful for extracting content from PDF reports, invoices, contracts, or research papers that you want to paste into another document or process programmatically. It works on digitally-created PDFs (where text is stored as actual text data). For scanned PDFs (where pages are images), text extraction depends on whether the PDF contains an embedded OCR text layer. Processing happens entirely in your browser — your PDF is never uploaded to any server. The PDF.js library is loaded once and cached for subsequent uses.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is PDF text extraction?
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PDF text extraction is the process of reading the text content embedded in a PDF file and converting it to plain editable text. PDFs store text in a binary format alongside layout information, fonts, and images. Text extraction decodes the binary text stream and assembles the characters in reading order, making the content available for copying, searching, or further processing.
Can I extract text from a scanned PDF?
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It depends on whether the scanned PDF has an embedded OCR (Optical Character Recognition) text layer. When a PDF is created by scanning a physical document, the pages are stored as images. If OCR has been applied (by Adobe Acrobat, an online scanner, or a print-to-PDF tool), a text layer is added behind the images and this tool can extract it. If no OCR layer exists, text extraction returns an empty or very sparse result.
Is my PDF safe when I use this tool?
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Yes. The PDF Text Extractor uses PDF.js, Mozilla's open-source JavaScript PDF library, which runs entirely in your browser. Your PDF file is read from your device into the browser's memory, processed locally, and the extracted text is displayed on screen. Nothing is uploaded to any server. The PDF.js library is loaded from Cloudflare's CDN on first use but processes your file entirely client-side.
What is PDF.js?
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PDF.js is an open-source JavaScript library created by Mozilla (the makers of Firefox). It implements a PDF renderer and text extractor entirely in JavaScript, allowing browsers to display and process PDF files without any native plugins or server-side processing. Firefox uses PDF.js as its built-in PDF viewer. It is actively maintained and supports the full PDF 1.7 specification.