FreeWrench
PDF to Text
Get the words out of a PDF in plain form, ready to paste into an email, a document or a translator.
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How to use it
- Open a PDF.
- The text appears in the box.
- Copy it or download a .txt file.
Good to know
This reads the text stored in the PDF. Scanned documents are only pictures of pages, so nothing will come out. Convert those with PDF to JPG, then use Image to Text.
Complex layouts with columns or tables may come out in an awkward order.
Will your PDF work?
| Type of PDF | Result |
|---|---|
| Exported from Word, a browser or an app | Clean text |
| Scan or photographed pages | No text, use OCR instead |
| Multi-column layout | Text present, order may be odd |
| Tables | Values present, columns are lost |
A quick test
Open the PDF and try to select a sentence with your cursor. If it highlights, the text can be extracted here. If the whole page is selected like a picture, it is a scan. Convert it with PDF to JPG, then run the pages through Image to Text.
Cleaning the result
- Pages are separated by a blank line.
- Lines usually break where they broke on the page. Remove Line Breaks puts paragraphs back together.
- You can copy everything or save it as a UTF-8 .txt file, which keeps accents and non-Latin alphabets.
Questions
Why do I have strange line breaks?
PDFs store text line by line. Remove Line Breaks will tidy it up.
Are other languages supported?
Yes, any language stored as real text in the PDF.