PDF Files Text Extractor

Designed not to be manipulated and tampered with in any way, PDF files are victims of their own success.

Having this format become the de facto standard for information interchange, extracting text out of a PDF document has become a need more than a want. PDF Files Text Extractor claims to extract the text of thousands of all kinds of PDF files at a considerable high speed and in one single operation.

This is not a free tool (though not a pricey one either), and the developers have made this point very clear by providing a completely useless trial version in terms of functionality. The program’s one-window tiny interface comes with no settings whatsoever (at least, not in its trial version). Thus, all that you can do is select the file or files you wish to process, click on the “Convert to” button, and wait for the text extraction to finish. You will be amazed by the speed at which the program deals even with the most lengthy documents. The truth is that, regardless of how bulky the source files are, the trial version will extract but the first line or so of each PDF file on the list. The resulting text will be saved in individual files in the output folder selected. This extreme limitation makes the page range selection feature completely useless, and that’s probably why it is nowhere to be found in the trial version. On top of that, if you wish to try again with just one of the files, you will need to clear the entire list and browse again for that file, as the “remove” icon on the program’s interface does not support file selection.

Unable to check the true capabilities of PDF Files Text Extractor, it is hard to recommend this tool over any of its many competitors. Even if it does extract the entire text of any PDF file (except for those that are password-protected), the lack of process customization settings makes it a very limited tool when compared to many other (free) similar utilities available on the Web.