Convert a PDF to plain text (.txt) in your browser
Extract the plain text from any PDF and copy it to your clipboard or download it as a .txt file, with the whole conversion running locally in your browser so the document is never uploaded.
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Pull the plain text out of a PDF and copy it to your clipboard or save it as a .txt file — the whole conversion runs in your browser, so the PDF never leaves your device.
Before you start
- Your file stays local. AttachKit extracts the text right on your device using pdf.js. The PDF is never uploaded to a server — you can open your browser's DevTools network tab and watch: nothing is sent.
- The PDF needs a text layer. This tool reads the text already embedded in the file. A scanned or photographed PDF is just pictures of words, so it comes back empty — run Searchable (OCR) on it first, then come back.
- Password-protected PDFs can't be read. If the file needs a password to open, remove the password first. Unlocking also happens locally.
- It's free. PDF to text has no tier gate and no page cap. The drop zone accepts files up to 100 MB (a guard that keeps your browser responsive — split bigger files with Pages first); very large PDFs simply take longer, because every page is processed on your own machine.
Steps
- Open PDF to text.
- Drop your PDF onto the drop zone, or click it to pick a file.
- Click Extract text. The button shows Reading… while the pages are processed. If you picked the wrong file, click Choose another file instead.
- Review the result. You'll see a count like "12,345 characters from 6 pages" and a preview of the first 5,000 characters of the output.
- Take the text whichever way suits you:
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Download .txt | Saves the full text as a plain-text file named after your PDF (report.pdf becomes report.txt) |
| Copy text | Puts the full text on your clipboard — the button flips to Copied and a "Text copied to clipboard" toast confirms it |
| Convert another | Clears everything so you can start over with a new file |
Result
You get the document's plain text in the PDF's reading order: a line break is kept wherever the PDF marks the end of a line, and a blank line separates each page. Plain text means exactly that — fonts, colors, columns, tables, and images are not preserved. If you need the formatting kept, use PDF to Word instead, which rebuilds text, images, and tables into a .docx.
The on-screen preview is capped at 5,000 characters and notes when it has been truncated; the downloaded .txt file and the clipboard copy always contain the complete text.
If the extraction comes back with zero characters, AttachKit tells you "No text layer found — this looks like a scanned PDF" and links you to Searchable (OCR), which adds a real text layer locally so you can extract it on a second pass.
Related
- PDF to text troubleshooting — empty output, password errors, garbled text
- Convert PDF to Word — keep formatting instead of getting plain text
- Make a scanned PDF searchable — add a text layer with OCR first
- Unlock a password-protected PDF — remove the open password so the text can be read
Related
Still stuck? Contact support →