How to convert PDF to TXT on iPhone
This conversion works on PDFs that contain text. It does not work on PDFs that are pictures of text — and most people who are disappointed by a PDF-to-text tool were holding the second kind without knowing it.
There are two kinds of PDF, and only one of them can do this
A PDF is a container. It can hold text objects — actual characters, with fonts and positions — or it can hold a photograph of a page, which contains no characters at all, just pixels arranged to look like writing. Both look identical on screen. They are completely different files.
A PDF exported from Word, Pages, a web browser, an invoice generator or a bank statement is almost always the first kind: there is a text layer, and extracting it is a matter of reading it out. A PDF produced by a scanner, a photocopier, a fax machine, or by photographing a document with your camera is the second kind. There is nothing to extract, because there is no text in the file — only an image.
How to tell which one you have, in ten seconds
Open the PDF in the Files app and preview it. Now try to select a word — tap and hold on a piece of the writing as if you were going to copy it.
- You get a selection handle around the word. There is a text layer. PDF to TXT will work.
- Nothing selects, or the whole page highlights as one block. There is no text layer. It is an image, and converting to TXT will hand you an empty or nearly empty file.
The other tell: search. If searching the PDF for a word you can plainly see on the page finds nothing, that word is not in the file as text.
Convexy does not do OCR. Optical character recognition — looking at pixels and guessing which letters they are — is a different job from conversion, and the app does not attempt it. If your PDF is a scan, converting it to TXT will produce an empty file. That is not a bug and no setting will change it.
What you can do instead, with no extra app: iOS has Live Text built in. Convert the PDF page to an image, open it in Photos, and use the Live Text button to select and copy the words the system recognises. It is manual, one page at a time, and it is the honest option we have.
What you actually get out
Plain text. Nothing else. It is worth being precise about what that means, because "convert to text" quietly implies more than it delivers:
- No layout. A PDF stores where each run of text sits on the page, not what role it plays. Extraction walks that content in the order the file stores it. For a normal single-column document that reads exactly as you expect. For two-column layouts, tables, sidebars, headers and footers, the order can interleave in ways that look scrambled — a table becomes a run of cell values, one after another, with no rows.
- No formatting. Bold, italics, headings, font sizes, colours: all gone. A heading is just another line.
- No images. Obviously — but it means captions can end up floating next to nothing.
- Page breaks come through as a blank line between pages, so you can still tell where one page ended.
For getting the words out of a report so you can quote, search, or paste them somewhere, this is exactly right. For reproducing the document, it is the wrong tool — you want the PDF.
The encoding option, and when to leave it alone
Convexy offers three text encodings: UTF-8, ASCII and ISO-8859-1. Leave it on UTF-8, which can represent every character your document might contain — accents, curly quotes, em dashes, any alphabet.
Choose ASCII and you are promising the app that the text contains nothing but the 128 characters of 1960s American teletype. If the PDF holds so much as one curly apostrophe — and PDFs from word processors are full of them — the conversion fails with an error rather than silently mangling your text. Only pick ASCII or ISO-8859-1 if a system on the receiving end has specifically asked for it.
The things people search for that this app cannot do
Said plainly, so you do not waste a download:
- PDF to Word (DOC/DOCX): not supported. Convexy does not read or write Word documents at all. You can convert to TXT and paste that into Word or Pages, but the layout will not come with it.
- PDF to Excel (XLS/XLSX): not supported. Table structure is not recoverable from a PDF's text layer without heuristics we do not ship.
- OCR of scanned PDFs: not supported, as above.
What a PDF can become in Convexy is exactly four things: TXT, and the image formats JPG, PNG and TIFF.
PDFs are the files most likely to be worth keeping private — contracts, statements, medical letters, filings. Convexy converts them on the device with no network involved. There is no server to upload to, no account, and it works in Airplane Mode, which is the simplest way to satisfy yourself that nothing is being sent anywhere. PDF Merge and PDF Split are free forever in the app — no purchase, no trial requirement.
How to do it
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Check the PDF has a text layer
Preview the file and try to select a word. If nothing selects, the PDF is a scan and there is no text to extract. Stop here.
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Bring the PDF into Convexy
Tap Browse files and pick the PDF, or share it into Convexy from Files, Mail or any other app.
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Choose TXT
Convexy offers only the formats this file can actually become. For a PDF that is TXT, JPG, PNG and TIFF. Tap TXT.
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Leave the encoding on UTF-8
Open Options if you need ASCII or ISO-8859-1 for a legacy system. Otherwise UTF-8 is the correct answer and the default.
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Convert, then save or share
Tap Convert. Open the result to check the reading order came out sensibly, then save it to Files or send it on.
Common questions
Why is my converted text file empty?
Because the PDF has no text in it. It is a scan or a photo — an image of a page, wrapped in a PDF. Extraction reads the text objects a PDF stores, and an image-only PDF has none, so the output is empty. Try selecting a word in the PDF preview: if you cannot, there is nothing to extract, and no converter that lacks OCR will get anything out of it.
Does Convexy do OCR?
No. The app does not recognise text inside images, and we would rather say so on this page than let you find out after paying. If you need the words out of a scan, iOS's built-in Live Text can copy text out of a picture: convert the PDF page to JPG or PNG, open it in Photos, and use Live Text. It works page by page and is not automated.
Can I convert a PDF to Word or Excel?
No. Convexy does not support DOC, DOCX, XLS or XLSX in either direction. A PDF can become TXT, JPG, PNG or TIFF, and nothing else. If you need an editable Word document, the honest path is to extract the text, paste it into Word or Pages, and rebuild the formatting — or go back to whoever produced the PDF and ask for the original.
Why is the extracted text out of order?
Because a PDF stores runs of text with positions, not a reading order. Extraction follows the order the file lists them in, which for a plain one-column document matches how you read it, and for two-column layouts, tables, pull-quotes and running headers may not. Tables are the worst case: you get the cell contents in sequence with no row structure, because the rows only ever existed visually.
Are my PDFs uploaded to a server?
No, and there is no server to upload them to. Convexy converts using the frameworks already on your iPhone. Turn on Airplane Mode and the app works exactly the same, which is a thing you can verify yourself in about five seconds. Contracts, statements and anything else you would rather not hand to a stranger's website stay on the device.
Do I have to pay for this?
Conversions are covered by a 14-day free trial, after which the app is a one-time $4.99 — no subscription. The PDF Merge and PDF Split tools are free forever and never ask for a purchase, trial or not.