How to copy text out of a PDF

Selecting text across forty pages by hand is miserable, and PDF selection rarely behaves. Taking the whole text out at once is faster.

Get the text
Whichever tool you use here, the file stays on your device. How that works

Step by step

  1. 1Add the PDF.
  2. 2Get the text, and it appears in one box.
  3. 3Keep the page markers if you need to know where each page started.
  4. 4Copy the lot, or save it as a plain text file.

Why some PDFs come out empty

A PDF exported from a word processor or generated by a system carries the real words inside it, and they come straight out.

A PDF made by scanning or photographing paper carries a picture of the words instead. Nothing here can copy those, because as far as the file is concerned there is no text on the page, only ink.

Reading those needs text recognition, which is a different job and not built yet. If your document comes out empty, that is what it is telling you.

Questions

Does it keep the layout?

No. You get the words in reading order, not the columns and tables around them.

Why is my document empty?

It is a scan. There is no text in it to take.

Is the file uploaded?

No.