PDF to text
Drop in a PDF and get the text out. It is read in your browser — the file never leaves your computer, because there is nowhere for it to go.
What it does with the layout
PDFs store position, not paragraphs, so raw extraction gives you text broken at every line end. This rejoins words hyphenated across a line break and unwraps lines that were only wrapped to fit the column, so what you get back reads as sentences rather than fragments. Page order is kept, with a blank line between pages.
Scanned PDFs
If a PDF is a photograph of a page — scanned textbooks usually are — there is no text inside it to extract, and this tool will tell you so rather than returning an empty box. Reading those needs to happen from the image itself, which is what the extension does when you snip part of the screen.
Which organelle is responsible for producing ATP in eukaryotic cells?
- A. Ribosome
- B. Mitochondrion
- C. Golgi apparatus
- D. Lysosome
An illustration of the extension, not a screenshot of this page.
Want this everywhere, not just on this page?
StudyFrame is a Chrome extension. Snip any question on any site and get the answer in place — plus summaries, flashcards and practice tests.
Free to install. 3 uses a day at no cost, more if you study on a streak.
Questions
- Is my file uploaded anywhere?
- No. The page has no upload endpoint. Your PDF is read with the browser's own file APIs and the text is produced on your machine. You can check by opening your browser's network tab while you use it — nothing leaves.
- Is there a size or page limit?
- 40MB, and no page limit. Very long PDFs take a few seconds because every page is parsed in your browser rather than on a server.
- Why is some text out of order?
- Multi-column layouts and complex tables store their text in the order it was drawn, not the order you read it. Academic papers in two columns are the usual culprit. The text is all there; the sequence may need a tidy.
- Do I need an account?
- No. There is nothing to sign up for on this page.