C# Convert PDF to Text (Code Example)

Topics Covered in Tutorial

• IronPDF
• Steps to Create PDF Files Programmatically
• Step 1: Create a C# Project
• Step 2: Install the IronPDF Library
  • Method 1: NuGet Package Manager
  • Method 2: NuGet Package Manager Console
  • Method 3: Using the DLL File
• Step 3: Add the IronPDF Namespace
• Step 4: Convert PDF to Text
  • Output
• Conclusion

IronPDF

IronPDF is a .NET library for PDF generation. It is a native .NET library and does not rely on external DLL or other tools. IronPDF is a cross-platform library written in C# and .NET that offers all the functionality required to work with PDF documents. It contains document rendering, form editing, text extraction, file encryption as well as other features. All of these operations can be performed through an intuitive API that has been extensively tested on various platforms such as Windows Forms, WPF, ASP.NET MVC, etc.

The current release of IronPDF provides simple access to these features:

• PDF generation
• PDF encryption
• PDF form fields with templates and validation logic
• Text extraction from PDFs (OCR)
• Fillable forms

Read-only access to the document internals (view, navigation, annotations):

Access to the metadata and document properties (title, keywords, author, subject):

IronPDF also contains some additional helper classes that help with converting HTML documents into fully formatted PDF files with text extraction. IronPDF provides very simple APIs to convert PDF to a text file.

Let's start with how to use the IronPDF library to convert a PDF document to a Text file.

Steps to Convert PDF Document to Text File

The first step is to create a C# project in Visual Studio. You can choose any C# Application template according to your needs. For simplicity purposes, this tutorial will use the Console Application template. You can use an already existing C# project for converting PDF to TXT files.

Install-Package IronPdf

using IronPdf;

using IronPdf;

using IronPdf;
using System;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        // Extracting image and text content from PDF Document

        // Open a 128-bit encrypted PDF
        using PdfDocument pdf = PdfDocument.FromFile("encrypted.pdf", "password");

        // Get all text to put in a search index
        string allText = pdf.ExtractAllText();

        // Display the extracted text in the console
        Console.WriteLine(allText);
    }
}

using IronPdf;
using System;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        // Extracting image and text content from PDF Document

        // Open a 128-bit encrypted PDF
        using PdfDocument pdf = PdfDocument.FromFile("encrypted.pdf", "password");

        // Get all text to put in a search index
        string allText = pdf.ExtractAllText();

        // Display the extracted text in the console
        Console.WriteLine(allText);
    }
}

Conclusion

This article shows how to easily extract text from PDF files using IronPDF .NET PDF library. This was accomplished with only writing a few lines of code and with a high percentage of accuracy. Additionally, IronPDF also has many useful features such as HTML to PDF conversion, PDF formatting tools, and numerous more core PDF features that are imperative for PDF editing. IronPDF also eliminates the dependency on Adobe Acrobat.

IronPDF is free for development purposes and also offers a free trial for production testing. IronPDF provides a variety of pricing plans that you can get according to your needs. The price of IronPDF is relatively significantly less than its competitors. With pricing variation from individual to large companies, it proves to be a compelling purchase with impressive performance.

The pricing plans for Iron Software's Suite

In addition, Iron Software offers a suite of five Iron Software packages for the price of just two. Please visit the Iron Software licensing details for more information.