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Extract text
Get the words out of a PDF, without retyping them.
or drop a file here · paste with Ctrl+V
PDF · up to 200 MB and 1000 pages
Read on your device. Nothing is uploaded.
Text is taken from the document's text layer. A scanned page has none — if the preview comes back empty, that is why.
Reading text…
Text extracted
How to extract text from a PDF
To extract text from a PDF, drop the file in, choose which pages you want, and press Extract text. SailPDF reads the text layer that is already inside the document and gives you a .txt file you can open anywhere. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is re-rendered, so what you get is exactly what the file contains — including its mistakes.
Add your PDF
Choose a file or drop it in. The page count appears before anything is read.
Pick the pages
All pages, or a range like 1-3, 5, 8-. You can also choose whether pages are separated by a blank line.
Extract and download
Press Extract text. The preview shows the first 2000 characters, and the .txt file downloads in one click.
What this tool does and does not do
This reads text, it does not recognise it. A PDF created from a word processor contains a text layer, and that is what comes out. A scanned page is a photograph of text: there is nothing to read, and pulling the words out would need OCR, which this tool does not do — it tells you how many pages had no text rather than handing back an empty file. Layout is not preserved: columns run together, tables become lines of text in reading order, and headings stop being headings. Fonts, bold, colour and links are lost, because a .txt file has nowhere to put them. Hyphenated line breaks usually survive as hyphens, and ligatures such as fi may come out as a single character or as their parts. A password-protected document must be unlocked first. Limits are 200 MB and 1000 pages per file.
Private by design
Extraction runs in your browser. Your PDF is never sent to a server, so nobody else can read it.
Questions
Can I extract text from a scanned PDF?
No. A scanned PDF is an image of a page, and there is no text inside it to read. That requires OCR, which converts the image back into text — a different tool, and one that will always make some mistakes. This tool reports how many pages had no text so you know immediately rather than wondering why the file is empty.
Does it keep the formatting?
No. You get plain text. Paragraphs usually survive as line breaks, but columns are read in order, tables become a run of lines, and bold, colour, font size and links disappear. That is inherent to .txt rather than a limitation of this tool.
Can I convert the text to Word or Excel?
Not here. This tool gives you plain text, which paste into Word or a spreadsheet in one step. Turning a PDF into a real .docx or .xlsx with structure intact is a much harder job, and one that rarely looks like the original.
Why are some words run together or oddly spaced?
A PDF does not store sentences, it stores instructions for placing glyphs on a page. Words that look separate may be one object, and words that look joined may be two. The extractor joins them with spaces and collapses the result, which is right most of the time and visibly wrong occasionally.
Can I extract just one page?
Yes. Choose Range and type something like 4 or 4-6. Ranges are 1-based and inclusive, and “8-” means page 8 to the end.
What encoding is the .txt file?
UTF-8, so accented characters, curly quotes and non-Latin scripts survive the trip. Windows Notepad, macOS TextEdit and every code editor read it without asking.
Is the text still there if the PDF is password-protected?
Not until you unlock it. SailPDF cannot read an encrypted document, so the tool asks you to unlock it first — Unlock PDF does that in the browser as well.
Is my file uploaded?
No. The PDF is read inside your browser tab and never leaves your device.