Pdf to text converter command line - consider
Batch convert PDF document to text file.
Free PDF to Text Converter is a free and easy-to-use PDF converter software to batch convert PDF document to text files.
Download
Command-line Options:
The command line program will come with PDF to Text Converter and later versions.
You can also convert PDF to text files without displaying any user interface, by using the following command-line options in our command-line program:
| Command Line | Command Line Description |
| /? | List all command line options. |
| /v | Show PDF to Text Converter version and copyright information. |
| /source <Filename> | Select source PDF file. For example: nkc.com.pk /source "c:\test\nkc.com.pk" |
| /scale <From> <To> | Select the page scale of source PDF file that you want to convert. The default scale is all pages. For example: nkc.com.pk /scale 1 4 |
| /target <Directoryname> | Set target directory. The default target directory is "c:\My PDF". For example: nkc.com.pk /target "c:\My Text" |
| /format <Format> | Set target text format: ANSI, Unicode, Unicode big endian and UTF8. The default target image format is ANSI. For example: nkc.com.pk /format ANSI |
For example: the command below will convert page of file "c:\test\nkc.com.pk" to ANSI text files in directory "c:\My Text".
nkc.com.pk /source "c:\test\nkc.com.pk" /scale 1 4 /target "c:\My Text" /format ANSI
We can also build SDK or DLL file to implement converting PDF to text files easily in programs. The command-line program, SDK or DLL file is for software developers use only. Contact us for more information.
Screenshot:
How to Convert a PDF File to Text Document on Linux
Unlike a text file, you can't edit a PDF directly. There are multiple ways to generate PDF files using text. But what if you want to go the other way round and convert PDFs to text files?
Luckily, Linux allows you to easily modify these files from the terminal. This article will demonstrate how to convert a PDF file to a text document on Linux.
Convert PDF to Text From the Terminal
Poppler is a software library used to render and modify PDF files. It contains a utility, known as pdftotext, that allows users to generate text files from PDFs. Since poppler-utils is not a part of the standard Linux packages, you'll have to install it manually using a package manager.
On Ubuntu and Debian:
To install Poppler on Arch Linux:
Installing the poppler-utils package on CentOS, Fedora, and other RHEL-based distributions is easy.
Convert an Entire PDF to Text
The basic syntax of the pdftotext command is:
where pdffile is the absolute or relative path to the PDF file, and textfile is the name of the output file.
For example, to convert nkc.com.pk to a text file:
If the file you're converting has watermarks or unaligned text, you can discard them in the output by using the -nodiag flag.
Process Pages Within a Specific Range
Use the -f and -l flag if you want to convert pages that fall within a specific range. For example, to convert pages one to five in nkc.com.pk to text:
To convert only the first page of the PDF file:
Convert Password-Protected PDF Files to Text
Pdftotext can even convert password-protected PDFs to text files. The -upw and -opw flags, which stand for user password and owner password respectively, take care of the authentication process while converting the PDF files.
Make sure to replace password with the password of the PDF file.
You can also combine multiple flags to get the desired output. For example, to convert pages one to three of a password-protected PDF to text:
Related: How to Convert a PDF File to Images in Linux
Graphically Convert PDF to a Text File
If working with the command line is not your cup of tea, you can convert PDFs to text files using graphical software like Calibre. It is an ebook management application that you can use to view, organize, and modify PDF files on your system.
Calibre is available on the official Linux distro repositories and anyone can download it using a package manager.
To install Calibre on Ubuntu and Debian:
On Arch Linux:
On RHEL-based distributions like CentOS and Fedora, you can download Calibre using either DNF or Yum.
How to Use Calibre to Convert PDF Files
Once installed, launch Calibre on your system using the Applications Menu. Alternatively, you can start Calibre from the terminal by typing:
To generate text files using PDF with Calibre:
- Click on the Add Books option from the menu.
- Locate and select the PDF file that you want to convert.
- Highlight the PDF file from the center panel and select Convert Books from the menu.
- From the Output format dropdown, select TXT.
- Finally, click on OK to continue.
Calibre will now start converting the specified PDF file to a text document. You can check the status of the process by clicking on the Jobs option, located at the bottom-right of the window.
Working With PDF Files in Linux
When you want to share a document with someone, converting it into a PDF before sharing is the most efficient way. Before, users had to install a dedicated PDF viewer on their system to display PDF files, but now, almost every browser comes with a built-in PDF viewer.
You can find several applications that allow a user to view and edit PDF files easily. Many Linux installations ship with LibreOffice, an office software suite, that can be used as a PDF editor.
How to convert PDF to Text
Is there some sort of PDF to text -converter?
You have a lot of options!
from poppler has already been mentioned.
There's a Haskell program called which works well.
calibre's commandline program (or calibre itself) is another option; it can convert PDF to plain text, or other ebook-format (RTF, ePub), in my opinion it generates better results than pdftotext, although it is considerably slower.
AbiWord can convert between any formats it knows from the command-line, and at least optionally has a PDF import plugin:
Yet another option is from the podofo PDF tools library. I haven't really tried that.
If you combine the two Ghostscript tools, and , you have yet another option.
I can actually think of a few more methods, but I'll leave it at that for now. ;)
answered Dec 11, at
7, gold badge silver badges bronze badges
This article presents 2 tools for converting PDF documents to editable text on Linux, using a graphical tool (Calibre) and a command line tool (pdftotext).
It worth noting that both tools used to extract text from PDF files mentioned in this article cannot extract the text if the PDF is made of images (for example scanned book pages / pictures).
Convert PDF to text using Calibre (GUI)
Calibreis a free and open source e-book software suite. It supports organizing, displaying, editing, and converting e-books, supporting a wide range of formats. The application runs on Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows.
Calibre should be available in your Linux distribution's repositories, and you should be able to install it using whatever software store you have on your system. For example, to install it on Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, openSUSE, or Arch Linux, use:
- Debian, Ubuntu or Linux Mint:
Calibre may also be installed on Linux by using the Flathub package(requires setting up Flathub / Flatpakon some Linux distributions).
There's yet another way to install Calibre on Linux explained on the application's downloads page, where you'll also find macOS and Windows binaries.
Related: How To Convert PDF To Image (PNG, JPEG) Using GIMP Or pdftoppm Command Line Tool
Now that Calibre is installed on your system, launch it and click to add the PDF (or multiple PDFs - Calibre supports batch converting multiple PDF files to text) you want to convert to text.
From the list of books, select the PDF (or multiple PDFs for batch conversion to .txt) you want to convert to text, and click the button. In the upper right-hand side of the conversion window, choose TXT as the :
There are many options you can tweak in this conversion dialog. For example, you can choose to automatically remove spacing between paragraphs, or insert a blank line between paragraphs (). You can also set the character encoding and line ending style (system, unix, windows, old_mac), and even format it to markdown.
After you're done with the configuration, click the button to start converting the PDF to text. The converted .txt file can be found in the directory where you've set the Calibre library location (and then in subfolders; if the author or book name can't be determined, the subfolder is called "Unknown").
What Calibre lacks in this case is a way to only convert a page or a page range - it can currently only convert entire PDF files to text.
PDF-related: How To Create Fillable PDF Forms With LibreOffice Writer
Convert PDF to text with pdftotext (command line)
pdftotext is a command line utility that converts PDF files to plain text. It has many options, including the ability to specify the page range to convert, maintain the original physical layout of the text as best as possible, set line endings (unix, dos or mac), and even work with password-protected PDF files.
pdftotextis part of the poppler/ poppler-utils / poppler-tools package (depending on the Linux distribution you're using). Install this package as follows:
- Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and other Debian/Ubuntu-based Linux distributions:
In other Linux distributions use your package manager to install the poppler / poppler-utils package.
Now that the package is installed, you can convert a PDF file to plain text and preserve its layout(I recommend using this option for maintaining the original physical layout, but you can try it without it too) with:
You'll need to replace with the name of the PDF file, and with the name you want the generated TXT file to be called. Also add the paths before filenames if needed (e.g. ). If no output text file is specified, pdftotext will name the file with the same file name as the original PDF file.
The layout option preserves the PDF layout when converting it to text, even if multi-column PDF cases.
What if you want to only convert a page range of the PDF to text, instead of the whole PDF file?Use (first page to convert) and (last page to convert) followed by the page number, like this:
Replace and with the first and last page number to extract, and with the PDF filename.
Want to use mac, dos or unix end-of-line characters?You can specify that too, using followed by , or . E.g. for unix line endings:
If you don't want to insert page breaks between pages, append :
Want to batch convert all PDF files from a folder to text files? pdftotext doesn't support batch PDF to text conversion (and doesn't work), but you can convert all the PDF files in a folder to text files by using a Bash FOR loop:
For more options, run and .
You might like: Download Master PDF Editor 4 For Linux (Free To Use Version)
How to batch convert pdf files to text
Frequently I am asked: I have a bunch of pdf files, how can I convert them to plain text so that analyze them using quantitative techniques? Here is my recommendation.
Download the xpdf suite of tools for your platform. This includes the part we will use, pdftotext.
Alternatives are the Apache PDFBox Java pdf library, and the Python-based PDFminer.[Windows only – Mac and Linux/Unix have this built in to the Terminal or shell already]: You will need a bash shell for your platform. (It is possible to do what I suggest below using the Windows shell, but it’s been so long since I programmed in the Windows DOS/command line script language that I won’t even attempt it now.) The main options seem to be win-bash and Cygwin.
Create a folder called pdfs in your home folder (for this example – of course it can be elsewhere). Copy your pdf files to this folder.
In a text edtor, create a text file called with the following contents:
(I am not providing a link because if you cannot create a text file and copy this text to it — and crucially edit it slightly for your own needs — then you probably won’t have much luck with these steps anyway.)
Update 12 November for Windows (thanks Thomas)
For Windows, one way to do the is to use Windows PowerShell ISE (Integrated scripting environment) in Programs/Accessories as follows:
Ken Benoit
Professor of Computational Social Science
A-PDF Text Extractor Command Line
A-PDF Text Extractor Command line (PTCMD) is a Windows console utility that extracts plan text from PDF files based on pages. PTCMD is a standalone program. It does not need Adobe Acrobat. A trial version for PTCMD is NOT available, but you can download the free GUI version here.
USAGE
PTCMD <Source> [<Output File>] [Options] Parameters: <Source>: The PDF file to be extract. <Output File>: The output text file. Options: -W<password> : Password of the pdf file if application. -B<BeginPage> and -E<EndPage>: Range of page number. -P<Extract option> : Select to extract only odd pages or even pages or all pages. Default is All. Options available: All, Odd, Even -H<Header> and -F<Footer> : Some special variants can be put at Header or Footer area of every page to display page information. Following are the variants: &p Current page number &a All page count &f PDF file name with full path. Such as c:\pdfs\nkc.com.pk &n PDF file name. Such as nkc.com.pk &d Extracting date -O<Output type> : Output type can be used in different situation.Includes:
Original: Follow the inner order of PDF files.
Smart: Rearrange text based on the position.
Position: output text with positions. Format:
@X=<xpos>,Y=<ypos>@<text>@ENDTEXT@
The unit of X,Y is point(1/72 inch) -T : Output the text extracted into screen, not file. Return Code: 0: Extract successfully. 1: Extract failed. 2: Parameters error. 3: Source file not found. 4: Load source file error. 5: Output file error. 6: Decrypt source failed. EXAMPLES: PTCMD nkc.com.pk PTCMD c:\pdfs\nkc.com.pk c:\pdfs\nkc.com.pk -W"P@ssw0rd" -B4 -E20 -Peven PTCMD "c:\pdfs\nkc.com.pk" -H" nkc.com.pk" -F" =Page&p="
See also
Excellent: Pdf to text converter command line
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How to Convert a PDF File to Text Document on Linux
Unlike a text file, you can't edit a PDF directly. There are multiple ways to generate PDF files using text. But what if you want to go the other way round and convert PDFs to text files?
Luckily, Linux allows you to easily modify these files from the terminal. This article will demonstrate how to convert a PDF file to a text document on Linux.
Convert PDF to Text From the Terminal
Poppler is a software library used to render and modify PDF files. It contains a utility, known as pdftotext, that allows users to generate text files from PDFs. Since poppler-utils is not a part of malwarebytes anti malware with crack standard Linux packages, you'll have to install it manually using a package manager.
On Ubuntu and Debian:
To install Poppler on Arch Linux:
Installing the poppler-utils package on CentOS, Fedora, pdf to text converter command line, and other RHEL-based distributions is easy.
Convert an Entire PDF to Text
The basic syntax of the pdftotext command is:
where pdffile is the absolute or relative path to the PDF file, pdf to text converter command line, and textfile is the name of the output file.
For example, to convert nkc.com.pk to a text file:
If the file you're converting has watermarks or unaligned text, you can discard them in the output by using the -nodiag flag.
Process Pages Within a Specific Range
Use the -f and -l bitdefender antivirus if you want to convert pages that fall within a specific range. For example, to convert pages one to five in nkc.com.pk to text:
To convert only the first page of the PDF file:
Convert Password-Protected PDF Files to Text
Pdftotext can even convert password-protected PDFs to text files. The -upw and -opw flags, which stand for user password and owner password respectively, take care of the authentication process while converting the PDF files.
Make sure to replace password with the password of the PDF file.
You can also combine multiple flags to get the desired output. For example, to convert pages one to three of a password-protected PDF to text:
Related: How to Convert a PDF File to Images in Linux
Graphically Convert PDF to a Text File
If working with the command line is not your cup of tea, you can convert PDFs to text files using graphical software like Calibre. It is an ebook management application that you can use to view, organize, and modify PDF files on your system.
Calibre is available on the official Linux distro repositories and anyone can download it using a package manager.
To install Calibre on Ubuntu and Debian:
On Arch Linux:
On RHEL-based distributions like CentOS and Fedora, you can download Calibre using either DNF or Yum.
How to Use Calibre to Convert PDF Files
Once installed, launch Calibre on your system using the Applications Menu. Alternatively, you can start Calibre from the terminal by typing:
To generate text files using PDF with Calibre:
- Click on the Add Books option from the menu.
- Locate and select the PDF file that you want to convert.
- Highlight the PDF file from the center panel and select Convert Books from the menu.
- From the Output format emsisoft anti-malware license key Free Activators, select TXT.
- Finally, click on OK to continue.
Calibre will now start converting the specified PDF file to a text document. You can check the status of the process by clicking on the Jobs option, located at the bottom-right of the window.
Working With PDF Files in Linux
When you want to share a document with someone, converting it into a PDF before sharing is the most efficient way. Before, users had to install a dedicated PDF viewer on their system to display PDF files, but now, almost every browser comes with a built-in PDF viewer.
You can find several applications that allow a user to view and edit PDF files easily. Many Linux installations ship with LibreOffice, an office software suite, that can be used as a PDF editor.
How to convert PDF to Text
Batch convert PDF document to text file.
Free PDF to Text Converter is a free and easy-to-use PDF converter software to batch convert PDF document to text files.
Download
Command-line Options:
The command line program will come with PDF to Text Converter and later versions.
You can also convert PDF to text files without displaying any user interface, by using the following command-line options in our command-line program:
| Command Line | Command Line Description |
| /? | List pdf to text converter command line command line options. |
| /v | Show PDF to Text Converter version and copyright information. |
| /source <Filename> | Select source PDF file. For example: nkc.com.pk /source "c:\test\nkc.com.pk" |
| /scale <From> <To> | Select the page scale of source PDF file that you want to convert. The default scale is all pages. For example: nkc.com.pk /scale 1 4 |
| /target <Directoryname> | Set target directory. The default target directory is "c:\My PDF". For example: nkc.com.pk /target "c:\My Text" |
| /format <Format> | Set target text format: ANSI, Unicode, Unicode big endian and UTF8. The default target image format is ANSI. For example: nkc.com.pk /format ANSI |
For example: the command below will convert page of file "c:\test\nkc.com.pk" to ANSI text files in directory "c:\My Text".
nkc.com.pk /source "c:\test\nkc.com.pk" /scale 1 4 /target "c:\My Text" /format ANSI
We can also build SDK or DLL file to implement converting PDF to text files easily in programs. The command-line program, SDK or DLL file is for software developers use only. Contact us for more information.
Screenshot:
PDFTron PDF2Text is a command-line application designed to convert PDF documents to text or XML. This section covers the basic usage of PDF2Text explaining all of the available options.
Basic Syntax
The basic command-line syntax is:
See more options in Command-Line Summary for PDF2Text
General Usage Examples
Example 1. The simplest command line: Convert PDF to plain text.
Notes:
This command heavily relies on defaults. The default output image format is plain text.
The '-o' (or --output) parameter is used to specify the output folder. If this option was not specified, text extracted will show in the console window.
Example 2. Convert specific PDF pages to XML, including font and styling information, while preserving ligatures and removing hidden text.
Notes:
'-a' or '--pages' option is used to specify the pages to be converted.
'-f' option specifies output file format.
'--xml_output_styles' option is used to show font and styling information.
'--noligatures' option is used to keep ligature setting of the PDF file.
'--remove_hidden_text' option is used so that hidden text of the PDF file can be removed.
'--output' is equal to '-o', specifies the output folder.
Example 3. Extract PDF text runs from a given clip region from a password protected PDF.
Batch Processing and the Use of Wildcards
PDF2Text supports processing of multiple input documents in the same run. For example, it is possible to specify multiple PDF folders and PDF2Text will automatically process all PDF documents matching a given file extension. For example, the following command-line will process all PDF documents in folders 'test1' and 'test2'
Wildcard characters can also be used to process multiple input files.
For example, if a directory contains the following PDF documents:
To process all PDF documents in this folder, you could specify:
To pdf to text converter command line all PDF documents starting with 'A', you could specify:
Or to process all PDF documents ending with '1', you could specify:
You can use either of the two standard wildcards the question mark (?) and the asterisk (*) to specify filename and path arguments on the command line.
The wildcards are expanded in the same manner as operating system commands. (Please refer to your operating system user's guide if you are unfamiliar with wildcards). Enclosing an argument in double quotation marks (" ") suppresses the wildcard expansion, pdf to text converter command line. Within quoted arguments, you can represent quotation marks literally by preceding the double-quotation-mark character with a backslash pdf to text converter command line. If no matches are found for the wildcard argument, the argument is passed literally.
Exit Codes
To provide additional feedback, PDF2Text returns exit codes after completing processing. The exit codes can be used to provide user feedback, for logging etc. This is particularly important for applications running in an unattended environment.
The following table lists possible exit codes and their description:
All codes other then '0' indicate that there was an error during the conversion process.
The following illustrates a sample Windows batch script that processes exit codes:
Get the answers you need: Support
Did you find this guide helpful?
Is there some sort of PDF to text -converter?
You have a lot of options!
from poppler has already been mentioned.
There's a Haskell program called which works well.
calibre's commandline program (or calibre itself) is another option; it can convert PDF to plain text, or other ebook-format (RTF, ePub), in my opinion it generates better results than pdftotext, although it is considerably slower.
AbiWord can convert between any formats it knows from the command-line, and at least optionally has a PDF import plugin:
Yet another option is from the podofo PDF tools library. I haven't really tried that.
If you combine the two Ghostscript tools, andyou have yet another option.
I can actually think of a few more methods, but I'll leave it at that for now. ;)
answered Dec 11, at
7, gold badge silver badges bronze badges
Pdf to text converter command line - topic
A-PDF Text Extractor Command Line
A-PDF Text Extractor Command line (PTCMD) is a Windows console utility that extracts plan text from PDF files based on pages. PTCMD is a standalone program. It does not need Adobe Acrobat. A trial version for PTCMD is NOT available, but you can download the free GUI version here.
USAGE
PTCMD <Source> [<Output File>] [Options] Parameters: <Source>: The PDF file to be extract. <Output File>: The output text file. Options: -W<password> : Password of the pdf file if application. -B<BeginPage> and -E<EndPage>: Range of page number. -P<Extract option> : Select to extract only odd pages or even pages or all pages. Default is All. Options available: All, Odd, Even -H<Header> and -F<Footer> : Some special variants can be put at Header or Footer area of every page to display page information. Following are the variants: &p Current page number &a All page count &f PDF file name with full path. Such as c:\pdfs\nkc.com.pk &n PDF file name. Such as nkc.com.pk &d Extracting date -O<Output type> : Output type can be used in different situation.Includes:
Original: Follow the inner order of PDF files.
Smart: Rearrange text based on the position.
Position: output text with positions. Format:
@X=<xpos>,Y=<ypos>@<text>@ENDTEXT@
The unit of X,Y is point(1/72 inch) -T : Output the text extracted into screen, not file. Return Code: 0: Extract successfully. 1: Extract failed. 2: Parameters error. 3: Source file not found. 4: Load source file error. 5: Output file error. 6: Decrypt source failed. EXAMPLES: PTCMD nkc.com.pk PTCMD c:\pdfs\nkc.com.pk c:\pdfs\nkc.com.pk -W"P@ssw0rd" -B4 -E20 -Peven PTCMD "c:\pdfs\nkc.com.pk" -H" nkc.com.pk" -F" =Page&p="
See also
How to batch convert pdf files to text
Frequently I am asked: I have a bunch of pdf files, how can I convert them to plain text so that analyze them using quantitative techniques? Here is my recommendation.
Download the xpdf suite of tools for your platform. This includes the part we will use, pdftotext.
Alternatives are the Apache PDFBox Java pdf library, and the Python-based PDFminer.[Windows only – Mac and Linux/Unix have this built in to the Terminal or shell already]: You will need a bash shell for your platform. (It is possible to do what I suggest below using the Windows shell, but it’s been so long since I programmed in the Windows DOS/command line script language that I won’t even attempt it now.) The main options seem to be win-bash and Cygwin.
Create a folder called pdfs in your home folder (for this example – of course it can be elsewhere). Copy your pdf files to this folder.
In a text edtor, create a text file called with the following contents:
(I am not providing a link because if you cannot create a text file and copy this text to it — and crucially edit it slightly for your own needs — then you probably won’t have much luck with these steps anyway.)
Update 12 November for Windows (thanks Thomas)
For Windows, one way to do the is to use Windows PowerShell ISE (Integrated scripting environment) in Programs/Accessories as follows:
Ken Benoit
Professor of Computational Social Science
In the next article we are going to take a look at pdftotext. This is an open source command line utility that will allow us to convert PDF files to plain text files. Basically what it does is extract the text data from the PDF files. This software is free and is included by default in many Gnu / Linux distributions.
In the following lines we are going to see a tool for the terminal, but for the same purpose of extracting text from PDF files you can also use a graphical tool like Caliber. It is worth noting that both the graphical tool and the one that we can use in the terminal, they cannot extract the text if the PDF is made of images (photographs, scanned book images, etc.).
On most Gnu / Linux distributions, pdftotext is included as part of the poppler-utils package. This tool is a command line utility that convert PDF files to plain text. In it we will find many options available, including the ability to specify the range of pages to convert, the ability to keep the original physical layout of the text as well as possible, set line endings, and even work with password-protected PDF files.
Related article:
Remove a known password from a PDF file in Ubutu
Table of Contents
Install pdftotext on Ubuntu
To install this tool on our Ubuntu system, in case you don't already have it installed, you just have to open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and write the following command in it to install poppler-utils:
How to use pdftotext
Convert a PDF file to text
Once we have the package installed on our operating system, we can convert a PDF file to plain text. Can try to keep the original design using the option -layout with the command, but we can also try without it. In a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) the command to use would be the following:
In the previous command we would have to replace nkc.com.pk with the name of the PDF file that we are interested in converting, and nkc.com.pk by the name of the TXT file in which we want to save the text of the input PDF file. If we don't specify any output text file, pdftotext will automatically name the file with the same name as the original PDF file but with a txt extension. Another thing that can be interesting to add to the command will be the paths before the file names if necessary (~ / Documents / nkc.com.pk).
Convert only a range of PDF pages to text
If we are not interested in converting the entire PDF file, and we want narrow down a range of PDF pages to convert to text there will be use -f option (first page to convert) Y -l (last page to convert) followed by each option with the page number. The command to use would be something like the following:
pdftotext -layout -f P -l U nkc.com.pkIn the previous command you will have to replace the letters P and U with the first and last page numbers to extract. The name of nkc.com.pk We will also have to change it and give it the name of the PDF file with which we want to work.
Use end-of-line characters
This we will be able to specify using -eol followed by mac, dos or unix. The following command will add unix line endings:
pdftotext -layout -eol unix nkc.com.pkHelp
For, check available options, run the man page:
It also can consult the help option with the command:
Convert PDF files from a folder using a Bash FOR loop
In case we want to convert all PDF files in a folder to text files, pdftotext does not support batch conversion from PDF to text. Esto we will be able to do it using a Bash FOR loop in terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T):
for file in *.pdf; do pdftotext -layout "$file"; doneFor, more information about pdftotext, you can consult the project website. In case you prefer not to have to type commands in the terminal, you can also use a online service to get the same result.
Is there some sort of PDF to text -converter?
You have a lot of options!
from poppler has already been mentioned.
There's a Haskell program called which works well.
calibre's commandline program (or calibre itself) is another option; it can convert PDF to plain text, or other ebook-format (RTF, ePub), in my opinion it generates better results than pdftotext, although it is considerably slower.
AbiWord can convert between any formats it knows from the command-line, and at least optionally has a PDF import plugin:
Yet another option is from the podofo PDF tools library. I haven't really tried that.
If you combine the two Ghostscript tools, and , you have yet another option.
I can actually think of a few more methods, but I'll leave it at that for now. ;)
answered Dec 11, at
7, gold badge silver badges bronze badges
This article presents 2 tools for converting PDF documents to editable text on Linux, using a graphical tool (Calibre) and a command line tool (pdftotext).
It worth noting that both tools used to extract text from PDF files mentioned in this article cannot extract the text if the PDF is made of images (for example scanned book pages / pictures).
Convert PDF to text using Calibre (GUI)
Calibreis a free and open source e-book software suite. It supports organizing, displaying, editing, and converting e-books, supporting a wide range of formats. The application runs on Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows.
Calibre should be available in your Linux distribution's repositories, and you should be able to install it using whatever software store you have on your system. For example, to install it on Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, openSUSE, or Arch Linux, use:
- Debian, Ubuntu or Linux Mint:
Calibre may also be installed on Linux by using the Flathub package(requires setting up Flathub / Flatpakon some Linux distributions).
There's yet another way to install Calibre on Linux explained on the application's downloads page, where you'll also find macOS and Windows binaries.
Related: How To Convert PDF To Image (PNG, JPEG) Using GIMP Or pdftoppm Command Line Tool
Now that Calibre is installed on your system, launch it and click to add the PDF (or multiple PDFs - Calibre supports batch converting multiple PDF files to text) you want to convert to text.
From the list of books, select the PDF (or multiple PDFs for batch conversion to .txt) you want to convert to text, and click the button. In the upper right-hand side of the conversion window, choose TXT as the :
There are many options you can tweak in this conversion dialog. For example, you can choose to automatically remove spacing between paragraphs, or insert a blank line between paragraphs (). You can also set the character encoding and line ending style (system, unix, windows, old_mac), and even format it to markdown.
After you're done with the configuration, click the button to start converting the PDF to text. The converted .txt file can be found in the directory where you've set the Calibre library location (and then in subfolders; if the author or book name can't be determined, the subfolder is called "Unknown").
What Calibre lacks in this case is a way to only convert a page or a page range - it can currently only convert entire PDF files to text.
PDF-related: How To Create Fillable PDF Forms With LibreOffice Writer
Convert PDF to text with pdftotext (command line)
pdftotext is a command line utility that converts PDF files to plain text. It has many options, including the ability to specify the page range to convert, maintain the original physical layout of the text as best as possible, set line endings (unix, dos or mac), and even work with password-protected PDF files.
pdftotextis part of the poppler/ poppler-utils / poppler-tools package (depending on the Linux distribution you're using). Install this package as follows:
- Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and other Debian/Ubuntu-based Linux distributions:
In other Linux distributions use your package manager to install the poppler / poppler-utils package.
Now that the package is installed, you can convert a PDF file to plain text and preserve its layout(I recommend using this option for maintaining the original physical layout, but you can try it without it too) with:
You'll need to replace with the name of the PDF file, and with the name you want the generated TXT file to be called. Also add the paths before filenames if needed (e.g. ). If no output text file is specified, pdftotext will name the file with the same file name as the original PDF file.
The layout option preserves the PDF layout when converting it to text, even if multi-column PDF cases.
What if you want to only convert a page range of the PDF to text, instead of the whole PDF file?Use (first page to convert) and (last page to convert) followed by the page number, like this:
Replace and with the first and last page number to extract, and with the PDF filename.
Want to use mac, dos or unix end-of-line characters?You can specify that too, using followed by , or . E.g. for unix line endings:
If you don't want to insert page breaks between pages, append :
Want to batch convert all PDF files from a folder to text files? pdftotext doesn't support batch PDF to text conversion (and doesn't work), but you can convert all the PDF files in a folder to text files by using a Bash FOR loop:
For more options, run and .
You might like: Download Master PDF Editor 4 For Linux (Free To Use Version)
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