Plain text is the most portable format there is — it opens anywhere, weighs almost nothing, and can be pasted into any application without carrying formatting. This converts a PDF to TXT in a single step, with no options to think about.
Your file never leaves your device. It is read and edited by JavaScript running in this tab. Nothing is uploaded or stored.
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Result
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What the PDF to TXT does
The extraction is the same as the text extractor: text runs are read from every page and grouped into lines by their vertical position. The difference is presentation — this tool converts and downloads immediately, with page markers off by default so the output is continuous prose.
Plain text keeps no formatting at all. Bold, italics, headings, fonts, colours, tables and images are all discarded, because a .txt file has no way to represent them.
How to use this tool
- Select your PDF. Conversion starts automatically.
- Check the preview to confirm the text extracted sensibly.
- Tick page markers if you need to know where each page began.
- Download the TXT file.
What survives the conversion
KEPT
All selectable text
Line breaks, reconstructed from glyph positions
Reading order, page by page
DISCARDED
Fonts, sizes, bold, italics, colour
Tables — cells become separate lines
Images, charts, logos, page layout
Headers and footers are kept, but repeat on every page
A .txt file stores characters and nothing else.
Worked example
Example: a 20-page report
| Source PDF | 2.4 MB with images and formatting |
| Output TXT | about 48 KB |
| Words | roughly 7,500 |
| Retained | text and line breaks only |
The size difference is mostly images and font data, none of which a text file carries.
What your result means
A word count in the result confirms text was found.
"No text found" means the PDF is a scan. Use a dedicated OCR tool instead.
For structure rather than plain prose, PDF to Markdown preserves headings and lists, and PDF to Word produces an editable document.
Important considerations
- Text files have no page concept. Turn on page markers if you need to know where pages ended.
- Multi-column layouts interleave, because extraction reads by vertical position across the full page width.
- Encoding is UTF-8, so accented characters and most Indic text survive if the PDF mapped them correctly.
- Headers and footers repeat on every page and are usually worth removing afterwards.
- For feeding text into another program, TXT is usually the right choice; for reading, Markdown is more pleasant.
Limitations of this tool
- Password-protected PDFs cannot be opened without the password.
- Processing happens in your device's memory, so very large documents can be slow.
- Damaged or partially downloaded files cannot be parsed.
- Scanned PDFs contain no text layer and produce nothing — OCR is required.
- All formatting, tables and images are lost, by definition of the format.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between this and the text extractor?
The extraction is identical. This tool converts and downloads immediately with page markers off, for a clean continuous text file; the extractor shows a preview and defaults to marking pages.
Why is my converted file empty?
The PDF is a scan with no text layer. Run it through a dedicated OCR tool, which reads characters from the image.
Will tables keep their layout?
No. A text file cannot represent columns, so table cells come out as separate lines.
Does it handle Hindi and other Indic text?
Usually, if the PDF embedded the fonts with correct character mapping. Output is UTF-8. Some PDFs map glyphs in a way that cannot be reversed, which produces garbled text — that is a limitation of the source file, not the converter.