About PDF to Text
When you need the words from a PDF rather than its layout, this saves them to a plain text file you can edit, search or paste into another document.
It reads text stored in the PDF, so it works with documents created on a computer. Scanned pages are pictures of text and need OCR, which GlobTool does not offer yet; you will see a clear message if no text is found.
Is your PDF text or a scan?
Open the PDF and try to select a sentence with your cursor. If individual words highlight, the file contains real text and this tool will work. If the whole page highlights as one picture, or nothing does, it is a scan.
What to expect from the result
- Single-column documents usually come out in reading order.
- Multi-column layouts and tables can be mixed together, so check the order.
- Headers and footers repeat in the text because they appear on every page.
How to use it
- 1Choose or drop a PDF
- 2Extract the text
- 3Download the TXT file
Questions
Why was no text found?
The PDF is probably a scan. Scanned pages contain images rather than text, so there is nothing to extract without OCR.
Is the formatting kept?
No. Plain text keeps the words and line breaks; fonts, images and tables are dropped. Text in columns or tables may come out in a different order.
Can I convert a PDF to Word?
Not at the moment. PDF to Text is the closest option when you only need the words.