Convert a Scanned PDF to Text
Short answer
Pull the words out of a scanned PDF as plain text. Ordinary PDF-to-text returns nothing for a scan — there is no text layer. This reads the image.
Drop a scanned PDF here
or drop your file here.
Nothing is uploaded — it stays on your device.
Runs in your browser — your file is never uploaded.
Add a scanned PDF, then press “Make PDF searchable”.
If you have tried a normal PDF-to-text converter on a scan and got an empty file back, nothing was broken. Those tools extract a text layer that is already inside the document, which is instant and perfectly accurate — and a scan simply has no such layer to extract. There is only a picture.
OCR takes the other route: it looks at the picture and works out which letters are in it. That is slower and imperfect where extraction is fast and exact, but it is the only thing that works on a scanned page. You get the recognised words as a plain .txt file, alongside a searchable PDF if you want to keep the original layout too.
Worth checking first: run your file through the ordinary PDF to Text tool. If it returns the text, use that — it will be perfect and instant. Only reach for OCR when it comes back empty, which is the signal that your file is genuinely a scan.
How to convert a scanned PDF to text
- 1Check it is really a scan. If PDF to Text returns nothing, it is a scan.
- 2Add the PDF here. Drop it in — it never leaves your device.
- 3Run recognition. A few seconds per page, running on your device.
- 4Download the .txt. Take the plain text, or the searchable PDF.
Frequently asked questions
Why did my normal PDF-to-text converter return nothing?+
Because your file is a scan. Those tools read an existing text layer, and a scanned page has none — only an image. OCR is what reads the image.
Is the extracted text perfect?+
No. OCR is a best guess at what the letters are. Clean, straight, high-resolution scans of printed text come out very close to perfect; faint or skewed pages produce errors you should proofread.