PDF to Text Command line Examples

Use these command-line examples for common PDF to Text tasks. See the CLI guide for installation, input and output handling, and diagnostics.

You can run the examples below without account setup. The CLI uses demo credentials unless you have configured your own API credentials. Update the input URLs and filenames as needed.

Commands use POSIX-shell syntax, as in Bash or Zsh, and save results in the current directory.

Basic examples

These commands save the result with --output. See Handle the Result for output choices and failure handling.

Convert a file

Upload an existing invoice.pdf file.

pdf2text --output invoice.txt \
    invoice.pdf

Convert a URL

pdf2text --output invoice.txt \
    https://your-server.com/invoice.pdf

Read bytes from stdin

Read invoice.pdf through stdin. Use the same - input for bytes piped from another program.

pdf2text --output invoice.txt \
    - < invoice.pdf

Customize text extraction

These examples upload extraction.pdf, a three-page document with a two-column article, wrapped paragraphs, and invoice fields.

Extract selected pages

Extract pages 1 and 3 of extraction.pdf into excerpt.txt.

pdf2text --print-page-range=1,3 \
    --output excerpt.txt \
    extraction.pdf

Extract text without layout spacing

Extract the article on page 1 into article.txt without spacing that recreates the PDF's columns. For tables, the default layout mode usually preserves column alignment better.

pdf2text --no-layout \
    --print-page-range=1 \
    --output article.txt \
    extraction.pdf

Reconstruct wrapped paragraphs

Extract page 2 into paragraphs.txt, joining wrapped lines with paragraph detection and removing line-end hyphens. For example, infor- followed by mation becomes information. Paragraph detection depends on the document's layout.

pdf2text --paragraph-mode=bounding-box \
    --print-page-range=2 \
    --remove-hyphenation \
    --output paragraphs.txt \
    extraction.pdf

Extract text from a page region

Crop away the headers and footers on every page, or extract only the customer, invoice, and reference fields on page 3.

The coordinates below match a 612 × 792 point (US Letter) page. Measure X and Y from the top-left corner; 72 points equal one inch. Adjust the regions for your PDF.

Exclude headers and footers

pdf2text --crop-area-height=648 \
    --crop-area-width=540 \
    --crop-area-x=36 \
    --crop-area-y=72 \
    --output body.txt \
    extraction.pdf

Extract an invoice field block

pdf2text --crop-area-height=70 \
    --crop-area-width=300 \
    --crop-area-x=36 \
    --crop-area-y=290 \
    --print-page-range=3 \
    --output fields.txt \
    extraction.pdf

Keep page boundaries

The default output has no page separators. Insert form-feed characters (\f) for processing text by page, or add a visible --- PAGE BREAK --- marker on its own line.

Use form-feed separators

pdf2text --page-break-mode=default \
    --output pages.txt \
    extraction.pdf

Use visible separators

pdf2text '--custom-page-break=
--- PAGE BREAK ---
' \
    --page-break-mode=custom \
    --output separated.txt \
    extraction.pdf