Extract Text

from ironpdf import *

# Load existing PDF document
pdf = PdfDocument.FromFile("content.pdf")

# Extract text from PDF document
all_text = pdf.ExtractAllText()

# Extract text from specific page in the document
page_2_text = pdf.ExtractTextFromPage(1)

Extract Text

IronPDF for Python can extract the text content of a PDF document — either from the entire document at once or from individual pages — using the ExtractAllText and ExtractTextFromPage methods.

Getting Started

Load a PdfDocument from a file using PdfDocument.FromFile, then call the appropriate extraction method. Both methods return a Python string containing the extracted text.

Understanding the Code

PdfDocument.FromFile(path): Opens an existing PDF document from the specified file path. For password-protected files, pass the password as a second argument.
ExtractAllText(): Returns a single string containing the text extracted from all pages of the document, in page order.
ExtractTextFromPage(pageIndex): Returns the text content of a single page. The pageIndex argument is zero-based — pass 0 for the first page, 1 for the second, and so on.

Use Cases

Text extraction is useful for:

Search indexing — making PDF content searchable in a database or search engine.
Data parsing — extracting structured data such as invoice numbers, dates, or addresses from PDF reports.
Content verification — programmatically checking that generated PDFs contain the expected text.
Accessibility — converting PDF content to plain text for screen readers or downstream processing.

Learn to extract content from PDFs with IronPDF for Python!