Convert PDF to Plain Text
Free online converter for PDF files. Unformatted UTF-8 text. Nothing to install, no watermark, and every file is deleted automatically.
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Upload a PDF file to convert it to Plain Text. Up to 3 files at once, 100 MB each.
Free · up to 3 files · 100 MB each · files deleted automatically after 1 hour.
About PDF and TXT
PDF .pdf
A fixed-layout page format. A PDF describes exactly where every glyph and line sits, so it looks identical everywhere — which is precisely what makes it awkward to edit.
Good for
- Identical layout on every device, screen and printer
- Embeds its own fonts, so nothing reflows or substitutes
- The accepted format for contracts, invoices and forms
Trade-offs
- Not built for editing — text is positioned, not flowing
- A scanned PDF is just images until text recognition is run
- Reflows badly on small screens
application/pdf
Plain Text .txt
Just characters. No fonts, no sizes, no layout — which is exactly why it will still open, unchanged, in fifty years.
Good for
- Universally readable, now and indefinitely
- Tiny, and works with every text tool ever written
- Nothing hidden — what you see is the whole file
Trade-offs
- No formatting, images or structure whatsoever
- Character encoding must be right or accents break
- Line endings differ between Windows and everything else
text/plain
PDF and TXT side by side
| TXT | ||
|---|---|---|
| Compression | Mixed — per object | None |
| Transparency | Yes | n/a |
| Animation | No | No |
| Typically used for | Contracts, invoices, forms, anything printed | Notes, logs, source data, long-term archives |
What changes when you convert PDF to TXT
Scanned PDFs have no text to extract
This pulls out the text a PDF genuinely contains. A PDF produced from a scanner or a photograph contains images of words rather than words, and there is nothing in the file to extract — the result comes back empty or nearly so. That is not a failure of the conversion; it means the document needs text recognition run over it first.
Reading order is not always the visual order
A PDF positions each run of text on the page and does not record which column or paragraph it belonged to. Extraction follows the order the text was written into the file, which for a single-column document matches what you see. Multi-column layouts, sidebars and tables can come out interleaved, because the file itself never said where one column ended.
Only the words survive
TXT stores characters and nothing else, so fonts, sizes, colours, images, tables and page layout are all dropped. What you get back is the text itself — which is the point when you want the content free of the formatting around it.
Other PDF conversions
Other ways to get Plain Text
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