PDFtoText Share Help Try It

Converts PDF to text (Part of XPDF)

Category

PDF

License

open source

Platforms

Windows macOS Linux

Released

1995

Path

c:\xpdf\pdftotext.exe

Notes

Used by Agent Ransack and FileLocator Pro for searching PDFs

Used by

FileLocator Pro/Agent Ransack, WordPress SearchWP plugin, Python pdftotext library, forked as Poppler

Examples

pdftotext.exe -nopgbrk -raw d:\source.pdf d:\output.txt

Try it

• Extract text from a PDF
  Extract all readable text from the selected PDF and stream it to stdout. Output is truncated to 4 KB for display.
• Extract text preserving page layout
  Use the -layout flag so columns, tables, and indentation are preserved (good for invoices and forms). Output is truncated to 4 KB for display.

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# PDFtoText - Help

Source: https://www.xpdfreader.com/download.html

```
pdftotext version 4.03 [www.xpdfreader.com]
Copyright 1996-2021 Glyph & Cog, LLC
Usage: pdftotext [options] <PDF-file> [<text-file>]
  -f <int>               : first page to convert
  -l <int>               : last page to convert
  -layout                : maintain original physical layout
  -simple                : simple one-column page layout
  -simple2               : simple one-column page layout, version 2
  -table                 : similar to -layout, but optimized for tables
  -lineprinter           : use strict fixed-pitch/height layout
  -raw                   : keep strings in content stream order
  -fixed <number>        : assume fixed-pitch (or tabular) text
  -linespacing <number>  : fixed line spacing for LinePrinter mode
  -clip                  : separate clipped text
  -nodiag                : discard diagonal text
  -enc <string>          : output text encoding name
  -eol <string>          : output end-of-line convention (unix, dos, or mac)
  -nopgbrk               : don't insert page breaks between pages
  -bom                   : insert a Unicode BOM at the start of the text file
  -marginl <number>      : left page margin
  -marginr <number>      : right page margin
  -margint <number>      : top page margin
  -marginb <number>      : bottom page margin
  -opw <string>          : owner password (for encrypted files)
  -upw <string>          : user password (for encrypted files)
  -q                     : don't print any messages or errors
  -cfg <string>          : configuration file to use in place of .xpdfrc
  -listencodings         : list all available output text encodings
  -v                     : print copyright and version info
  -h                     : print usage information
  -help                  : print usage information
  --help                 : print usage information
  -?                     : print usage information
```