Extract text from a scanned PDF

Coverton · Published October 3, 2026

A PDF may contain selectable text or only a picture of each page. Choose the tool that produces the result you need.

Check whether text can be selected

Try selecting a sentence or searching for it in a PDF viewer. Scans may need OCR; selectable text can still copy in the wrong order.

Text, searchable PDF or a table?

Use OCR for editable text, searchable PDF to search scanned pages, and table extraction for CSV or XLSX. Scanned tables and merged cells are not automatically reconstructed.

Why does TXT contain letters and numbers?

Base64 represents image bytes; it does not read words in a picture. Use OCR instead and check names, dates and amounts. The first run downloads the engine and language files.

Tools you can use

Image and scanned PDF OCR Make a scanned PDF searchable Extract a PDF table to Excel or CSV PDF to JPG or PNG Encode images as Base64

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