Convert PDF to TXT
Your PDF goes in and a TXT comes out. A PDF looks the same to everyone who opens it, on any device, with the fonts, images and layout locked in place. Your file never leaves your computer.
Need the other direction? Convert TXT to PDF
How to convert PDF to TXT
- 1 Drop your PDF .pdf file onto the page, or click to browse for it.
- 2 Check the options. Nothing is thrown away on the way to TXT, so there is no quality dial to set.
- 3 Convert. The work happens on your own machine, so how long it takes depends on your computer and the file.
- 4 Download the TXT, or add more files and do the whole set in one go.
Why convert PDF to TXT
- Readable by every piece of software ever written, with nothing to interpret.
- Smallest possible representation of the words themselves.
- Extracting readable text out of a PDF or word processor document.
- PDF: reflowing text for a small screen works poorly and often fails entirely.
PDF compared with TXT
How the two formats differ on the things that decide whether a conversion is worth making.
| Property | TXT | |
|---|---|---|
| File extension | .txt | |
| Compression | Lossy or lossless | Uncompressed |
| Multiple pages | Yes | No |
| Colour depth | RGB, CMYK, greyscale and spot colour with ICC profiles | UTF-8, UTF-16 or legacy single-byte encodings |
| Typical file size | Depends on mode | Largest |
| Introduced | 1993 | 1963 |
| Developed by | Adobe, now ISO 32000 | ASCII committee, later Unicode Consortium |
Quality and what changes
TXT stores the same content under a different set of rules, so what matters here is compatibility rather than picture quality. Convert once from the best source you have rather than through a chain of intermediate files.
- A multi-page PDF produces one TXT per page.
- One TXT limitation to keep in mind: line endings differ between platforms and can display as one long line.
Questions about PDF to TXT
What happens to a multi-page PDF?
TXT holds one page, so each page becomes a separate file and you get the set as a ZIP. Nothing is discarded, it just cannot stay in a single document.
Is my PDF file uploaded anywhere?
No. The whole thing runs inside the browser tab you already have open. Your PDF is read straight from your own disk, converted on your machine and handed back as a TXT. Nothing is sent anywhere, nothing is stored and there is no account.
Is there a file size limit?
There is no server-side limit because no server sees the file. The real ceiling is your device memory, since the input and the output both have to fit in the tab. A few hundred megabytes is usually fine on a desktop machine and considerably less on a phone.
Can I convert several PDF files at once?
Yes. Add as many as you like and they are processed one after another, then offered as separate TXT downloads or as a single ZIP. Speed depends on your own processor rather than on a queue.
Does the converter work offline?
Yes, after the page has loaded once. The engine is cached by the browser, so you can disconnect, reload and keep converting. That falls out of doing the work locally rather than being a separate mode you switch on.