Sometimes you don't need formatting, tables or layout — you just need the raw words. A plain .txt file is the smallest, simplest, most universally compatible way to get text out of a PDF: it opens instantly in any text editor, pastes cleanly anywhere, and works well as input for scripts, search tools or word-processing.
MakeitPDF's PDF to Text tool extracts every word from your PDF into a downloadable .txt file, free and directly in your browser.
Key takeaways
- Extracts all text content from every page of the PDF.
- Each page is clearly marked in the output, so you can tell where content came from.
- Delivered as a plain .txt file that opens anywhere.
- Works on text-based PDFs; scanned PDFs need OCR first.
Table of contents
How to convert PDF to text
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1
Open the PDF to Text tool and upload your PDF.
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2
The tool reads through every page and extracts the text content automatically.
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3
Download the resulting .txt file, with each page's content clearly separated.
What if the PDF is a scan?
A scanned PDF is just a picture of a page — there's no underlying text to extract, so this tool won't find any content on those pages. Run the file through the OCR PDF tool first to generate a text layer, then convert the OCR'd file to text.
When to use Word or Excel instead
Plain text strips out all formatting — fonts, bold, tables, columns. If you need to preserve the document's layout for editing, convert to Word instead. If the content you need is specifically a data table, PDF to Excel will extract it with rows and columns intact rather than flattened into plain lines.
Frequently asked questions
Will the text keep its original formatting?
No — a .txt file has no formatting. Bold, italics, fonts, colors and layout are all removed, leaving just the words and line breaks.
Can I tell which page a piece of text came from?
Yes — the output marks the start of each page, so you can trace any line of text back to its original page number.
Does this work on password-protected PDFs?
Remove the password first, then convert the unlocked file to text.
What if my PDF has tables I need to keep structured?
Use PDF to Excel instead — it keeps table rows and columns intact rather than flattening everything into plain text lines.
