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Extract Text From PDF on Linux Command Line (pdftotext)

Extract text from PDF files on Linux command line using pdftotext. Covers install, layout modes, password-protected PDFs, OCR for scanned docs & batch scripts.

DragosDragos20 min read
Extract Text From PDF on Linux Command Line (pdftotext)

Extracting text from PDF files on the Linux command line is straightforward with pdftotext, part of the poppler-utils package. It converts PDF documents to plain text. No GUI, no cloud services, no accounts. Install the package, point it at a file, and get text out the other side.

This guide covers install, basic usage, every useful option, handling password-protected and scanned PDFs, alternatives when pdftotext is not enough, batch scripts, and troubleshooting.

  • Install poppler-utils on any major Linux distro
  • Extract text from PDFs with pdftotext (basic and advanced)
  • Handle password-protected and scanned/image-based PDFs
  • Use batch scripts to process multiple PDFs at once
  • Troubleshoot common extraction failures

What is poppler-utils?

Poppler-utils is a collection of command-line utilities for manipulating PDF files. It is based on the poppler library, a fork of the xpdf library. The star of this package is pdftotext, which converts PDF files to plain text with configurable layout, encoding, and page selection.

Other tools in the package handle different PDF tasks:

Key poppler-utils tools at a glance

Tool Purpose
pdftotext Convert PDF to plain text (the focus of this article)
pdfinfo Print PDF metadata: title, author, page count, etc.
pdftohtml Convert PDF to HTML
pdfimages Extract images from a PDF
pdfseparate Split a PDF into single-page files
pdfunite Merge PDF files with pdfunite into one

If you work with PDFs from the terminal regularly, poppler-utils is one of those packages you install once on every server. It pairs well with other essential Linux commands you use daily.

How to install poppler-utils on Linux

Poppler-utils is in the official repositories of every major Linux distribution. Pick your distro below.

Legacy RHEL/CentOS 7

If you are still on RHEL/CentOS 7, use sudo yum install poppler-utils. On anything newer (RHEL 8+, Fedora, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux), use dnf.

Verify installation

Run:

pdftotext --version

Expected output (version will vary by distro):

pdftotext version 24.02.0
Copyright 2005-2024 The Poppler Developers - http://poppler.freedesktop.org
Copyright 1996-2011 Glyph & Cog, LLC

If you get command not found, the package is not installed or not in your PATH. Re-run the install command for your distro.

Check your version for newer features

Some options require minimum poppler versions:

  • -tsv needs poppler ≥ 22.05.0 (Ubuntu 22.10+, Fedora 37+, Arch rolling)
  • -remove-hyphens needs poppler >= 26.05.0 (May 2026). Only on rolling distros or manual builds, NOT in Ubuntu 24.04 (ships 24.02.0).

Check with pdftotext --version before relying on these features.

How to use pdftotext: basic text extraction

Basic syntax and first extraction

The simplest invocation takes an input PDF and produces a text file:

pdftotext input.pdf output.txt

If you omit the output filename, pdftotext uses the same name with a .txt extension:

pdftotext input.pdf
# Creates input.txt in the current directory

Verify it worked:

wc -l output.txt

If the line count is zero or near-zero, the PDF is likely scanned/image-based. See the OCR section below.

Reading from stdin and writing to stdout

You can pipe PDF data in and text out using - as the filename:

cat input.pdf | pdftotext - -

This is useful in scripts and pipelines where you do not want intermediate files:

pdftotext report.pdf - | grep -i "quarterly revenue"

Customize output format with pdftotext options

pdftotext has many options for controlling how text comes out. They fall into a few groups.

Layout control: -layout, -raw, -fixed

  • -layout: Preserves the original layout of the PDF, including columns, tables, and spacing. This is my default for multi-column documents.

    pdftotext -layout input.pdf output.txt

  • -raw: Keeps the original text order but ignores layout positioning. Useful when -layout garbles text due to unusual fonts.

    pdftotext -raw input.pdf output.txt

  • -fixed number: Assumes fixed-pitch (monospace) text with the given character width in points. Useful for PDFs that were generated from fixed-width text.

    pdftotext -fixed 8 input.pdf output.txt

  • -colspacing number: Controls column detection threshold (default: 0.7). Lower values (e.g., 0.3) detect narrower column gaps; higher values (e.g., 1.5) are more lenient. Adjust when columns are getting merged or split incorrectly.

    pdftotext -layout -colspacing 0.3 input.pdf output.txt
Page selection: -f and -l

Extract a specific page range:

# Extract only pages 5 through 12
pdftotext -f 5 -l 12 input.pdf output.txt
  • -f number: First page to extract (1-based).
  • -l number: Last page to extract.

Combine with other options:

pdftotext -f 1 -l 5 -upw "mypass" -layout report.pdf pages1-5.txt
Structured output: -bbox, -tsv, -htmlmeta

These options generate structured output for programmatic processing:

  • -bbox: Generates HTML with bounding box coordinates for each word. Useful for positional text analysis.

    pdftotext -bbox input.pdf output.html

  • -tsv: Outputs tab-separated values with bounding box data per block, line, and word. Columns: level, page_num, par_num, block_num, line_num, word_num, left, top, width, height, conf, text.

    pdftotext -tsv input.pdf output.tsv

    TSV mode requires poppler ≥ 22.05.0

    Available in Ubuntu 22.10+, Fedora 37+, Arch rolling. Check your version with pdftotext --version.

  • -htmlmeta: Generates HTML with PDF metadata (title, author) embedded.

    pdftotext -htmlmeta input.pdf output.html

  • -bbox-layout: Like -bbox but preserves layout structure in the HTML output.

Text cleanup: -nodiag, -remove-hyphens, -eol

  • -nodiag: Discards diagonal text. This is useful for removing watermark text that appears at an angle in the PDF.

    pdftotext -nodiag input.pdf output.txt

  • -remove-hyphens all|soft|none: Controls how end-of-line hyphens are handled:

    • all: Remove all end-of-line hyphens and merge words (default)
    • soft: Only remove soft hyphens (U+00AD), keep ASCII hyphens
    • none: Keep all hyphens and line breaks
    pdftotext -remove-hyphens all input.pdf output.txt
pdftotext -remove-hyphens soft input.pdf output.txt

    -remove-hyphens requires poppler ≥ 26.05.0

    This option was added in May 2026. It is NOT in Ubuntu 24.04 (ships 24.02.0). Only available on rolling distros (Arch) or via manual compile. Has no effect in -raw or -layout mode.

  • -eol unix|dos|mac: Sets the end-of-line convention in the output text. Default is the host OS convention.

    pdftotext -eol dos input.pdf output.txt
Output encoding and other options: -enc, -nopgbrk, -q, -r

  • -enc encoding: Sets the output text encoding. Common values: UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, ASCII, UCS-2.

    pdftotext -enc UTF-8 input.pdf output.txt

  • -nopgbrk: Removes form feed characters (^L) between pages. Default behavior inserts them.

  • -q: Quiet mode. Suppresses error messages.

  • -r number: Sets the resolution in DPI (default: 72). Affects output of some rendering-dependent options.

  • -x number -y number -W number -H number: Crop area coordinates. Defines a rectangular region to extract text from.

    pdftotext -x 100 -y 100 -W 400 -H 600 input.pdf output.txt

  • -cropbox: Uses the crop box instead of the media box (with -bbox).

You can see the full list of options with:

pdftotext -h

Extract text from password-protected PDFs

Many PDFs have restrictions that prevent copying or printing text. pdftotext can handle two types of passwords.

Using -opw and -upw options

  • -opw "password" — Owner password. Bypasses all restrictions (printing, copying, modifying). Use this when the PDF lets you open it but blocks text extraction.

    pdftotext -opw "ownerpass" restricted.pdf output.txt

  • -upw "password" — User password. Required to open the file at all. Use this when the PDF prompts for a password on open.

    pdftotext -upw "userpass" locked.pdf output.txt

If you get exit code 3 or “Permission denied” errors, the PDF has restrictions. Try -opw first.

Decrypting with qpdf before extraction

For complex encryption or when pdftotext’s password options do not work, decrypt the PDF first with qpdf:

# Install qpdf
sudo apt install qpdf

# Decrypt
qpdf --password=secret --decrypt locked.pdf unlocked.pdf

# Then extract
pdftotext unlocked.pdf output.txt

This removes all password protection permanently from unlocked.pdf, so handle it accordingly.

When pdftotext doesn’t work: OCR for scanned PDFs

pdftotext cannot read scanned PDFs

If your PDF was created by scanning paper documents, it contains images, not text. pdftotext will produce empty or near-empty output. You need OCR (optical character recognition) to add a text layer.

This is the number one reason pdftotext “doesn’t work” for people. A scanned PDF looks like it has text on screen, but the text is actually a picture of text.

How to detect a scanned/image-based PDF

Quick check:

pdftotext suspect.pdf - | wc -c

If the byte count is very low (under 100 bytes for a multi-page document), the PDF is almost certainly scanned. You can also use pdfinfo:

pdfinfo suspect.pdf | grep Pages

If it shows many pages but pdftotext extracts almost nothing, it is scanned.

Solution 1: OCRmyPDF + Tesseract

OCRmyPDF adds an invisible OCR text layer to scanned PDFs, making them searchable and extractable:

# Install
sudo apt install ocrmypdf tesseract-ocr

# Add OCR text layer
ocrmypdf scanned.pdf searchable.pdf

# Now extract text
pdftotext searchable.pdf output.txt

Verify it worked:

pdftotext searchable.pdf - | wc -c
# Should show substantial byte count

For non-English PDFs, install the appropriate Tesseract language pack:

# French
sudo apt install tesseract-ocr-fra

# German
sudo apt install tesseract-ocr-deu

# Then specify language
ocrmypdf -l fra scanned.pdf searchable.pdf

Solution 2: pdftoppm + tesseract directly

If OCRmyPDF is not available or you need more control over the OCR process, convert PDF pages to images first, then run Tesseract:

# Convert PDF pages to PPM images at 300 DPI
pdftoppm -r 300 scanned.pdf page

# OCR the first page
tesseract page-1.ppm output

# Output will be in output.txt

This approach gives you control over resolution and per-page processing, but you need to loop over multiple pages yourself.

Alternative command-line tools for PDF text extraction

pdftotext handles most cases, but sometimes you need a different tool. Here is when to reach for something else.

Tool When to use it Install
mutool draw Complex layouts where pdftotext garbles columns sudo apt install mupdf-tools
pdfgrep Search PDFs without extracting everything sudo apt install pdfgrep
xpdf pdftotext Tabular data (has -table mode poppler lacks) sudo apt install xpdf
calibre ebook-convert Ebook workflows, different extraction engine sudo apt install calibre

If you prefer a web-based GUI for PDF operations, take a look at self-hosted PDF manipulation with Stirling PDF — it runs in Docker and handles extraction, conversion, merging, and more through a browser.

mutool draw (MuPDF)

Sometimes handles complex layouts better than pdftotext:

mutool draw -F txt input.pdf -o output.txt

pdfgrep — search PDFs without full extraction

When you just need to find a string in a PDF, not extract the whole thing:

pdfgrep -n "search term" document.pdf

# Search across multiple PDFs
pdfgrep -rn "search term" *.pdf

xpdf pdftotext (with -table mode)

xpdf’s version of pdftotext has options that poppler’s does not, notably -table for tabular data and -simple for single-column layouts:

sudo apt install xpdf
pdftotext -table input.pdf output.txt

xpdf vs poppler pdftotext

These are two different binaries with the same name. On Ubuntu, installing xpdf may change which pdftotext is in your PATH. Check with which pdftotext and pdftotext --version to confirm which one you are running. xpdf’s version shows “xpdf version” in its output; poppler’s shows “poppler” copyright.

calibre ebook-convert

A heavier tool, but useful for ebook-oriented workflows:

ebook-convert input.pdf output.txt

Batch processing and practical scripts

Extract all PDFs in a directory

for pdf in *.pdf; do
    pdftotext -layout "$pdf" "${pdf%.pdf}.txt"
done

This creates a .txt file for every .pdf in the current directory.

Pipe extracted text to grep for searching

Search within a PDF without creating intermediate files:

pdftotext document.pdf - | grep -i "keyword"

After extracting text, you can transform text case with sed or do further text processing in your pipeline.

One-liner to verify extraction succeeded

Use this in scripts to check if extraction produced real output:

test $(wc -c < output.txt) -gt 10 && echo "OK" || echo "LIKELY SCANNED PDF"

Combine with password and page range:

pdftotext -f 1 -l 5 -upw "mypass" -layout report.pdf pages1-5.txt
test $(wc -c < pages1-5.txt) -gt 10 && echo "Extraction OK" || echo "Failed or empty"

When batch processing, you may also find it useful to compare folder contents to verify all expected output files were created.

Troubleshooting common pdftotext issues

Empty output (scanned PDF)

Symptom: pdftotext produces an empty or near-empty output file.

Cause: The PDF is scanned/image-based with no text layer.

Fix: Use OCRmyPDF to add an OCR text layer (see the OCR section above).

Garbled or missing text

Symptom: Extracted text has wrong characters, missing letters, or garbled output.

Cause: The PDF uses custom font encodings that pdftotext cannot map to Unicode.

Fixes:

  1. Try -raw mode to bypass layout processing: 
    pdftotext -raw input.pdf output.txt
  2. Force UTF-8 encoding: 
    pdftotext -enc UTF-8 input.pdf output.txt
  3. If poppler cannot handle it, try mutool draw -F txt as an alternative.
Bad column detection

Symptom: Columns are merged together or text from different columns is interleaved.

Cause: The column detection heuristic does not match the PDF’s layout.

Fix: Adjust -colspacing (default: 0.7). Lower values detect narrower column gaps:

pdftotext -layout -colspacing 0.3 input.pdf output.txt

Try values between 0.3 and 1.5 until the layout looks right.

Watermark text in output

Symptom: Diagonal watermark text (e.g., “CONFIDENTIAL”, “DRAFT”) appears in the extracted text.

Cause: pdftotext extracts all text, including diagonal overlays.

Fix: Use -nodiag to discard diagonal text (poppler ≥ 0.80.0):

pdftotext -nodiag input.pdf output.txt
Understanding pdftotext exit codes

For scripting and automation, pdftotext returns meaningful exit codes:

Exit code Meaning
0 Success
1 Error opening PDF file
2 Error opening output file
3 Permission error (PDF has restrictions)
99 Other error

Use in scripts:

pdftotext input.pdf output.txt
case $? in
    0) echo "Success" ;;
    1) echo "Cannot open PDF" ;;
    3) echo "PDF has restrictions — try -opw option" ;;
    *) echo "Unknown error" ;;
esac

Conclusion

pdftotext from poppler-utils is the default tool for extracting text from PDFs on Linux. It handles most cases out of the box: basic conversion, layout preservation, page selection, encoding control, and password-protected files. For scanned PDFs, pair it with OCRmyPDF and Tesseract. For tabular data that pdftotext mangles, try xpdf’s -table mode or mutool draw.

For more PDF work on the command line, you can merge PDF files with pdfunite or self-host Stirling PDF for a browser-based toolkit. And if you are building out your Linux admin skills, check out guides on securing your SSH server and checking remote ports with nc.

#Pdf#Command-line

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