In my previous articles I have shared many tutorials, that might help you somewhere in dealing with PDF files. Today I am going to share free online tools that will assist you to extract text and images from PDF documents.

PDF file formatting is the most preferred document format for sharing a document securely with others. Sometimes we need images or text from a PDF document to edit or save it on our computer, but extracting text and images is not an easy job when a PDF is concerned as certain actions can be restricted from being performed on them.

For this, we mostly prefer free online tools. Online tools are safer than free software programs that allows us to extract images and text on our system. However, many free tools may contain adware or malware viruses. To prevent from being affected by them, we are going to use online solutions instead of downloadable tools. Here, I am sharing some online websites which have been used by millions of users worldwide to extract text and images from Portable Document Format files.

Let’s check out the 2 websites.

  1. onlineocr.net
  2. extractpdf.com

Extract Using Online OCR:

Go to http://www.onlineocr.net, now click on Select file button and choose the PDF file. In STEP 2 choose the file language. After a few minutes your file will be uploaded. Now click on convert button in step 3.

Here, you can see that your file has been converted to .txt format (or what you have chosen). NOTE: In .docx format they don’t allow the document to be downloaded. If you want to download the document, then you have to convert the document to .txt format.

About Online OCR: Online OCR is a free online OCR service providing website that allows its users to convert PDF and Image files to Adobe PDF (.pdf), Microsoft Excel (.xls and .xlsx), MS Word (doc & docx), RTF Document (.rtf) and Text plain (.txt) format. Additionally, it also supports 46 international languages for conversion.

Extract Using Extract PDF:

Open http://www.extractpdf.com and click on Choose file (max 10mb) button, or you can also enter the file URL. Now click on Send File button to upload the document. Just after a short process your file should be uploaded onto their server. Now you will see 4 options:

  1. Images: Use this option if you want to extract and save the enclosed images.
  2. Text: By extracting text you can copy/download the converted text.
  3. Fonts: Fonts can be also extracted if they are attached.
  4. Metadata: Metadata is the information of the file. If you want to download it, then click on the tab, copy text and save it in notepad or in MS Word file.

If you want to download the image, click on it or if you only want the text, then click on the tab, copy it’s content and save it on your PC.

About Extract PDF: It is an efficient online tool to extract images, text, fonts and metadata from PDF files. It allows you to upload a max of 10mb of file. It’s the only website that allows the above 4 features for free.

If online conversation is not allowed in your office, then you can choose Adobe Reader to avail the facilities. You can download it from the official Adobe website: http://get.adobe.com/reader/. By using this software you can extract text from PDF file.

Conclusion: I have tried both websites and found them to be relevant for users. The above tools are excellent, the results of conversion is also very good. I have also tried many other tools but they were not as perfect as these two are in conversion.