How to extract text from a PDF
- Drop your PDF above — extraction starts immediately.
- Preview the text right on the page.
- Copy all or download .txt — whichever fits what you're doing.
Digital PDFs vs. scans
A PDF exported from Word, Google Docs, or a website carries its text as real characters — this tool pulls them out directly, instantly. A scanned PDF is just pictures of pages: there are no characters to extract, only pixels. If your result comes back empty, that's what happened — OCR support for scans is on the Sleek PDF roadmap.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get the text out of a PDF?
Drop the PDF above — the text is extracted immediately, page by page. Read it in the preview, copy it to your clipboard, or download the whole thing as a .txt file.
Why did my PDF come back empty?
Your PDF is almost certainly a scan — photographs of pages rather than digital text. Scans need OCR (optical character recognition) to read, which is a planned Sleek PDF feature. If the PDF was made digitally (exported from Word, a website, etc.), the text extracts fine.
Does the formatting survive?
Plain text comes out with line breaks preserved as best the PDF allows — PDFs store text as positioned fragments, not paragraphs, so complex layouts (columns, tables) may read out of order.
Is my document uploaded?
No. Extraction runs entirely in your browser — useful precisely when the document is something confidential you want to quote or search.