How to convert PDF to Text

Convert PDF Documents to Text.

Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format developed by Adobe Systems. It preserves the fonts, images, graphics, and layout of any source document, regardless of the application and platform used to create it. It can be opened using Acrobat Reader, a freeware program that can be downloaded from the Adobe website.

Originally PDF was mostly used by graphic artists, designers and publishers for producing color page proofs. With its evolving technology, however, today PDF is used for virtually any data that needs to be exchanged among applications and users. It is an open file format specification and PDF is available to anyone who wants to develop tools to create, view or manipulate PDF documents.

Generally Text is the same as txt. Txt is a filename extension, typically for Microsoft and certain other computer file systems, for files that consist of plain ASCII text without bolding, italics, underlining, colors, or graphics. Files with the .txt extension can easily be read or opened by any program that reads text.

Download PDF to Text Converter here


The following is one of the PDF to Text Converters step by step guide, telling you how to convert PDF to Text file with PDF2TXT. It can extract various information (title, subject, author, keywords, creator, producer, created date, security, version, page count, etc.) from PDF files.

Step.1 Download PDF2TXT here and install it.

Step.2 Start PDF2TXT. If you want to extract text from multiple columns and maintain the column format in the output file, you can click "Menu -> Format Output Text". This feature is fine for table PDF files. However, if you only want to extract text, you can un-select the "Format Output Text" menu item, but the generated file will have no page layout information.

Step.3 In the PDF2TXT main window, click the button "Open", browse to the folder containing the PDF file(s) you want to convert.

Step.4 Click the button "Open", you can specify the output path and name the output file. If you don't like to name the new txt file, it will be set by default corresponding to old PDF file names.

Step.5 Click the button "Save". The program begins to convert the PDF file.

Step.6 When the conversion is over, you can view the output file.

Note - PDF2TXT couldn't extract text from certain PDF files. Firstly, please ensure your PDF file isn't an image file; if there are only images in your PDF file, you will need to use OCR software to recognize it. Secondly, please ensure your PDF file isn't using Embedded Fonts; you can use the "File"->"Document Properties"->"Fonts..." menu command in Adobe Acrobat to confirm this.