How to Copy Text from a PDF (and Why Scanned PDFs Don't Work)
Updated 7 November 2026 · 5 min read
Extract text from a PDF to quote, edit or translate it, fix broken line breaks, and understand when you need OCR instead.
Two kinds of PDF
A PDF made from Word, Google Docs or a website contains real text — you can select words with the cursor. A PDF made by scanning paper or photographing pages contains only pictures of text.
Text extraction reads the first kind. For the second kind, software must first recognise letters in the image, a process called OCR (optical character recognition).
Extracting the text
Open PDF Text Extractor and choose your file. The text appears page by page, so you can copy just the part you need or download everything as a .txt file. Nothing is uploaded; the PDF is read inside your browser.
Fixing broken lines
PDF text often has a line break at the end of every printed line, which looks messy when pasted into an email or document. Paste it into Text Cleaner and use ‘Join broken lines’ to rebuild normal paragraphs. ‘Collapse multiple spaces’ tidies double spaces left by justified text.
If a page comes out empty
An empty page usually means that page is a scanned image. Check by trying to select text in your PDF viewer — if you can't highlight individual words, there is no text layer to extract.
Good uses
Common reasons people extract PDF text:
- Quoting a paragraph from a report or judgment without retyping it.
- Counting words in a PDF assignment.
- Pasting text into a translator or summariser.
- Searching a long document in a text editor.