---
title: Free PDF to Text Converter – Extract Text from PDF to TXT Online | HelpRange
url: https://www.helprange.com/tools/pdf-to-text
---

Free tool

# PDF to text converter

Drop a PDF and download its text as a .txt file – page by page, ready to edit, search, translate or paste anywhere.

[Do this for your team](https://www.helprange.com/feature-secure-documents-sharing)

## How it works

### Drop the PDF

The text is extracted as soon as the file is in.

### Check the options if you need to

Page markers are on by default; keep the layout for tables and columns.

### Download the .txt

UTF-8 text that opens in any editor – Notepad, TextEdit, VS Code, Word.
  ![PDF to text: the text of a PDF in a plain .txt file with page markers](/static/images/ui/tools/pdf-to-text.jpg)PDF to text: the text of a PDF in a plain .txt file with page markers

### Text recognised. Now control who reads it.

Share the searchable PDF as a HelpRange link: see who opened it and which pages they read, stamp every page with the reader's e-mail, block downloads and revoke access any time.

 [Try HelpRange free](https://www.helprange.com/?from=tool-cta#signUpSection) [Compare plans – from $39 per team](https://www.helprange.com/pricing?from=tool-cta) [See secure sharing](https://www.helprange.com/feature-secure-documents-sharing)

Plain text is the most portable format there is: it opens in every editor, can be searched and compared, pasted into an AI assistant, a translation tool or a database – without the formatting of the PDF getting in the way.

## Page breaks and layout

- **Mark page breaks** (default) – a line "--- Page 2 ---" before each page, so you can find where a quote came from.
- **Form feed** – the classic invisible page-break character that pdftotext and printers use.
- **No page breaks** – one continuous text, best for pasting into an AI assistant or a translator.
- **Keep the layout** – words stay at their horizontal position, so columns and tables line up in a monospaced font.

## Scanned PDFs

If the PDF is a scan, there is no text to extract – only pictures of pages. The tool says so and offers **Continue with OCR**: the same file goes to the [OCR tool](https://www.helprange.com/tools/ocr-pdf), which recognises the text. Then run PDF to text again. For tables, [PDF to CSV](https://www.helprange.com/tools/pdf-to-csv) keeps the rows and columns.

## Example: quoting from a report

You need a few paragraphs of a 60-page report in an e-mail. Copying from the PDF viewer breaks every line in the middle of a sentence. Extract the text here, open the .txt file, search for the passage – the page marker above it tells you which page to cite.

FAQ

## PDF to text converter – questions

What if my PDF is a scan?

A scanned PDF has no text, only pictures of pages. The tool tells you so and offers to continue with OCR, which recognises the text first.

Can I keep the layout of columns and tables?

Yes – tick "Keep the layout" under More options: words stay at their position on the line, so columns line up in a monospaced font.

Do you keep my file?

Only for a short time: uploads are deleted right after processing, the result after 30 minutes – or at once with “Delete now”.

Which encoding is the text file?

UTF-8, the encoding every modern program reads – accents, Cyrillic, Greek and Asian scripts included.

 Related free tools

 [OCR a PDF – make a scanned PDF searchable](https://www.helprange.com/tools/ocr-pdf)[PDF to CSV converter](https://www.helprange.com/tools/pdf-to-csv)[PDF to Excel converter](https://www.helprange.com/tools/pdf-to-excel)[Compare two PDFs](https://www.helprange.com/tools/compare-pdf)

[All free tools](https://www.helprange.com/tools)