Getting all the text out of a PDF as a .txt file

Copying text out of a PDF a page at a time is tedious, and the result is often scrambled with line breaks in odd places. When you want all of it, a single export is much better. PDF by Zaweba saves all the text in a document as a .txt file from File > Export, and also offers Export > Accessible text.

Why export to plain text

Plain text is the most portable form there is. Any editor opens it, any search tool can index it, and it pastes cleanly into an email, a spreadsheet or a notes app. Once the words are in a .txt file, you can search them with other tools, count them, compare versions or feed them to another program.

Typical jobs include pulling the words of a report into a document you are writing, keeping a searchable archive of statements, getting the lyrics or script out of a booklet, or quoting from a long document without retyping.

Plain text versus accessible text

The plain .txt export gives you the words of the document. Accessible text is the option to try when the order and structure of the text matter more, such as in documents with columns, side panels or headings, where the reading order a person would follow is not simply top to bottom across the page.

If the first export reads oddly, with columns jumbled together, the accessible version is worth a try. Which works better depends on how the PDF was made.

Getting a clean result

Real text is the key. A PDF made from a word processor or a web page contains actual characters, and they export well. A scanned PDF is a picture of a page, so there is no text to export until the text has been recognised.

Fonts can also play a part. Some PDFs store text in ways that look right on screen but do not map neatly back to letters. If the export shows odd symbols instead of words, that is the PDF's encoding rather than something you did, and the words on screen can still be read normally.

After exporting, open the file in a text editor and skim it. You may want to tidy headers and footers that repeat on every page, or join lines that were broken at the edge of each page.

Text export beside the other exports

Text export is the simplest of the export routes. If you want the words with their layout, such as paragraphs and headings in a document you can edit, Export to Word or RTF is the better choice. If you want tables in columns, the spreadsheet export is made for that. And if you only need a sentence or two, selecting and copying is quicker.

It also pairs well with combining. Combine a set of documents first, then export the text of the result, and you have every word from the set in one file.

Where plain text falls short

Do not expect formatting. Plain text has no bold, no fonts, no pictures and no columns. That is its strength for searching and pasting, and its weakness for anything you want to look good.

Do not forget about scans. If the export comes out empty or almost empty, the PDF is probably a scan, and the text needs recognising first.

Kept for what it is good at, the text export is a fast way to get every word out of a PDF and into whatever you are doing next, offline and without retyping.