Is it possible to convert pdf to text? [closed]

Answer 1

Bruno Lowagie (Developer of iText) says unfortunately no.

That's very normal. It's 'in the nature' of PDF. PDF is a one-way process. The PDF is the end product. You are not supposed to convert it to text.

You need an OCR tool.

http://itext-general.2136553.n4.nabble.com/Convert-PDF-to-text-td2142916.html

Regards Stefan

Answer 2

Actually, it is possible to convert PDF to text. A better term than convert would be extract though.

You only need an OCR tool if the PDF has images only. This is typically the case if the PDF is a result of scanning documents. But even then, text is often inserted by the scan driver as invisible text so that the PDF content can be searched.