Text Extraction vs. OCR — What's the Difference?
A digital PDF (one created by a word processor, exported from software, or saved as 'print to PDF') already contains a hidden text layer — the characters are stored as data, even if you can't see the code. Text extraction simply reads that layer and outputs it as plain text. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is different: it's for scanned PDFs where pages are images with no text layer, and it uses AI to recognise characters from the visual pixels. If your PDF was created digitally, use Extract Text. If it was scanned, use the OCR tool.
- Try selecting text with your cursor in a PDF viewer first — if it highlights individual words, the PDF has a text layer and extraction will work
- If selecting text selects the entire page as an image, you need OCR instead
- Extracted text may have formatting differences from the original due to PDF's complex layout model
What You Get From Text Extraction
The output is a plain .txt file containing all readable text from the PDF, page by page. Tables are extracted as tab-separated text, which pastes cleanly into a spreadsheet. Multi-column layouts may have text in reading order, though this can vary depending on how the original PDF was structured. Headers and footers are included, as they're part of the page's text content.
Step-by-Step: Extract Text From a PDF
1. Open the Extract Text tool and upload your PDF. 2. Click Extract Text. 3. Preview the extracted content in the text area. 4. Click Download to save the .txt file, or copy the content directly from the preview.
After Extraction — What Next?
Common next steps: paste the text into Google Docs or Word to re-format it, import into a database or spreadsheet, use as training data for an AI model, or search and replace content you can't edit in the original PDF. If you need to re-build the document as a Word file, the extracted text gives you a clean starting point.