pdftotext

Portable Document Format (PDF) to text converter (version 3.03)

TLDR

Convert filename.pdf to plain text and print it to standard output

$ pdftotext [filename.pdf] -

Convert filename.pdf to plain text and save it as filename.txt

$ pdftotext [filename.pdf]

Convert filename.pdf to plain text and preserve the layout

$ pdftotext -layout [filename.pdf]

Convert input.pdf to plain text and save it as output.txt

$ pdftotext [input.pdf] [output.txt]

Convert pages 2, 3 and 4 of input.pdf to plain text and save them as output.txt

$ pdftotext -f [2] -l [4] [input.pdf] [output.txt]

SYNOPSIS

pdftotext [options] [PDF-file [text-file]]

DESCRIPTION

Pdftotext converts Portable Document Format (PDF) files to plain text.

Pdftotext reads the PDF file, PDF-file, and writes a text file, text-file. If text-file is not specified, pdftotext converts file.pdf to file.txt. If text-file is '-', the text is sent to stdout. If PDF-file is '-', it reads the PDF file from stdin.

OPTIONS

-f number: Specifies the first page to convert.
-l number: Specifies the last page to convert.
-r number: Specifies the resolution, in DPI. The default is 72 DPI.
-x number: Specifies the x-coordinate of the crop area top left corner
-y number: Specifies the y-coordinate of the crop area top left corner
-W number: Specifies the width of crop area in pixels (default is 0)
-H number: Specifies the height of crop area in pixels (default is 0)
-layout: Maintain (as best as possible) the original physical layout of the text. The default is to 'undo' physical layout (columns, hyphenation, etc.) and output the text in reading order.
-fixed number: Assume fixed-pitch (or tabular) text, with the specified character width (in points). This forces physical layout mode.
-raw: Keep the text in content stream order. This is a hack which often "undoes" column formatting, etc. Use of raw mode is no longer recommended.
-nodiag: Discard diagonal text (i.e., text that is not close to one of the 0, 90, 180, or 270 degree axes). This is useful for skipping watermarks drawn on body text.
-htmlmeta: Generate a simple HTML file, including the meta information. This simply wraps the text in <pre> and </pre> and prepends the meta headers.
-bbox: Generate an XHTML file containing bounding box information for each word in the file.
-bbox-layout: Generate an XHTML file containing bounding box information for each block, line, and word in the file.
-tsv: Generate a TSV file containing the bounding box information for each block, line, and word in the file.
-cropbox: Use the crop box rather than the media box with -bbox and -bbox-layout.
-colspacing number: Specifies how much spacing we allow after a word before considering adjacent text to be a new column, measured as a fraction of the font size. Current default is 0.7, old releases had a 0.3 default.
-enc encoding-name: Sets the encoding to use for text output. This defaults to "UTF-8".
-listenc: Lists the available encodings
-eol unix | dos | mac: Sets the end-of-line convention to use for text output.
-nopgbrk: Don't insert page breaks (form feed characters) between pages.
-opw password: Specify the owner password for the PDF file. Providing this will bypass all security restrictions.
-upw password: Specify the user password for the PDF file.
-q: Don't print any messages or errors.
-v: Print copyright and version information.
-h: Print usage information. (-help and --help are equivalent.)

BUGS

Some PDF files contain fonts whose encodings have been mangled beyond recognition. There is no way (short of OCR) to extract text from these files.

EXIT CODES

The Xpdf tools use the following exit codes:

0: No error.
1: Error opening a PDF file.
2: Error opening an output file.
3: Error related to PDF permissions.
99: Other error.