---
title: "Extract text from a PDF"
url: https://recursiveai.org/onepdf/cookbook/extract-text/
description: "Read the text of every page of a PDF in C# in reading order, leave out running headers and footers, and keep the page layout when you need it, with OnePDF."
version: "1.11.0"
---

# Extract text from a PDF

Read the text of every page of a PDF in C# in reading order, leave out running headers and footers, and keep the page layout when you need it, with OnePDF.

```sh
dotnet add package RecursiveAI.OnePdf --version 1.11.0
```

```csharp
using OnePdf;
using OnePdf.Text;

using PdfDocument doc = PdfDocument.Open("report.pdf");

// Whole document: pages are read in parallel, and running headers and footers are found by their repetition.
var options = new PdfTextOptions
{
    Mode = PdfTextMode.ReadingOrder,       // the default; also ContentOrder and Layout
    ExcludeHeadersAndFooters = true,       // leave repeated headers and footers out of the text
};
IReadOnlyList<PdfPageText> pages = doc.ExtractText(options);

using (StreamWriter output = File.CreateText("report.txt"))
{
    for (int i = 0; i < pages.Count; i++)
    {
        output.WriteLine($"--- page {i + 1}");
        output.WriteLine(pages[i].Text);
    }
}

// One page, keeping the arrangement on the page, like pdftotext -layout.
PdfPageText page = doc.Pages[0].ExtractText(new PdfTextOptions { Mode = PdfTextMode.Layout });
Console.WriteLine(page.Text);
```

`report.txt` gets each page’s text, columns read one after the other. The console gets the first page in layout mode:

```text
Week       1

Prepared  by  Jane Doe,  account  4471-2290.  The harbor  trial ran for six weeks. Each crew logged its
...
Left column: crews on the north quay. Left column:  Right column: crews on the south quay. Right column:
crews on the north quay. Left column: crews on the  crews on the south quay. Right column: crews on the
```

## The three modes

- **`ReadingOrder`** (the default) orders blocks by the structure tree when the file is tagged and the tree covers the page, and by the page’s geometry otherwise. Blocks are separated by a blank line and lines by a line feed.
- **`ContentOrder`** keeps the order in which the content stream draws the glyphs.
- **`Layout`** puts words on a monospace grid that keeps the page’s arrangement, like `pdftotext -layout`.

`pageText.GetText(PdfTextMode.ContentOrder)` gives a page’s text in another mode, worked out from the same page while the document is still open.

## Headers and footers

Whole-document extraction flags a block as a header or footer when it sits in the top or bottom 12% of the page and the same text appears there on at least half of the pages. Digits are ignored when comparing, so “Page 3 of 6” counts, and so does a “Week 3” title that opens every page: in the run above, `ExcludeHeadersAndFooters` dropped the “Week” titles along with the running header and the page numbers. Check the result before you exclude. Each block’s `Role` tells you what was flagged. Single-page `page.ExtractText()` doesn’t flag anything, because it has only one page to compare.

## Good to know

- Ligatures are split into letters, and Arabic and Hebrew presentation forms are folded to their base characters. Text marked with `/ActualText` replaces what it covers.
- Invisible text, such as the text layer an OCR tool adds to a scan, is included and flagged: `word.IsVisible` is false.
- `JoinHyphenatedWords = true` joins a word split by a hyphen at the end of a line.
- Long documents stay small in memory: whole-document extraction doesn’t keep each page’s glyphs unless you set `RetainGlyphs`.
- OnePDF does no OCR. A scanned page without a text layer gives no text.

For word boxes, see [Get words and their positions](https://recursiveai.org/onepdf/cookbook/word-positions/). Every threshold of the layout analysis is in [Text layout and reading order](https://recursiveai.org/onepdf/docs/text-layout/), and the versioned JSON output is in [Extraction JSON](https://recursiveai.org/onepdf/docs/extraction-json/).

For a longer walk-through with an ASP.NET Core upload endpoint and a comparison with PdfPig and iText, see [Extract text from PDF in C#](https://recursiveai.org/onepdf/articles/extract-text-from-pdf-csharp/).

To pull out the embedded pictures as well: [Extract images from a PDF in C#](https://recursiveai.org/onepdf/articles/extract-images-from-pdf-csharp/).