Pull the plain text out of a PDF and save it as a text file. All formatting, images and layout are dropped and you are left with the words. This is what you want when the text is going somewhere else entirely - into a script, a search index, a translation tool or a plain-text archive - and the appearance does not matter.
There is no text in a scan to extract - the pages are images. Run OCR PDF first, which recognises the words and adds them as a text layer.
Extraction follows the order the text was written into the file, which for a multi-column layout often means jumping between columns. There is no reliable way to recover the intended reading order from a PDF that does not record it.
Use this when you want words only. Use Markdown when you want to keep headings, lists and emphasis as structure.
Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection and processed on CoonTool's own server, not in your browser. The working copy is deleted automatically once the job is done, and in any case within 24 hours. Nothing is stored permanently and no account is required.