CHECK THE RESULT
Check that your PDF text is searchable
Check whether your exported PDF has selectable, searchable text. Try a real search, copy a phrase, and understand how wrapping affects text from plain notes.
The difference you can test
A PDF may contain text characters, images or both. A photograph of a page can look readable while offering no text for a search tool to find. This converter writes the supported input as PDF text; it does not take a screenshot of the text area.
That means a compatible PDF reader can select and search the words. The canvas preview on this website is a visual rendering, so text selection belongs in the downloaded PDF reader. Rendering a preview as canvas does not change the underlying downloaded document into an image.
Run a small check before sending a large document
Use a short sample with ordinary punctuation and a few supported accented letters. Open the exported file in the reader your recipient uses when possible. A viewer that only displays a thumbnail may not provide search even when the file contains text.
- Paste the sample below and create a preview.
- Download the file and open it in a PDF reader with text search.
- Search for workshop, then select and copy the phrase Café meeting.
- Paste the copied phrase into a plain-text editor and check that the accents are present.
- For a longer document, repeat with phrases near the middle and the end.
Try this sample
Café meeting The workshop starts at 10:30. Bring the résumé and the printed agenda. Final note: check the last page.
Wrapping changes visual lines
The tool adds visual line breaks where the page width runs out. A PDF reader’s text extraction may include those breaks when you copy a paragraph. A search spanning a wrap can behave differently between readers. If a phrase is not found, search for a distinctive word inside it.
Characters and paragraphs are preserved through the layout, but the tool does not promise byte-for-byte reconstruction of the original TXT file from the PDF. Line endings are normalized, tabs become spaces and PDF readers choose their own extraction order and whitespace.
Searchability is also different from accessibility. The output has text, but it is not a tagged PDF and does not claim PDF/UA compliance, a semantic heading structure or a validated screen-reader reading order. If a formal accessible document is required, use an authoring workflow designed for that requirement.
When OCR or an editor is the right next step
This website accepts plain text and TXT files. It does not open an existing PDF or recognize words in a scanned image. To make a scan searchable, you need OCR. To retain a Word document’s styling, export it directly from the word processor instead of first reducing it to plain text.
If the preview shows an unsupported-character error, do not assume the output can be fixed by changing a search setting. No document is created for that input until the character issue is resolved or you choose a tool with the required font support.
After you change the input, generate and download again. The old download is hidden when the text changes. Keep the source note alongside the exported PDF when exact original spacing or future editing matters.
Sources and related checks
The settings, supported characters and size limits above describe this converter. For the underlying technical behavior, see: