I find it a little klutzy but it can do most things.
PDFgear
winget install PDFgear.PDFgear
Extracting text locally is a challenge. (Meaning not uploading for privacy)
Converting to Word sound like a good idea but my experience is not good.
The best I find is Poppler
winget install oschwartz10612.Poppler
Poppler, during install, is registered to the system profile.
To extract text from example.pdf
Open CMD in the folder containing the pdf file or type the path of the file.
pdftotext -layout example.pdf example.txt
pdftotext -layout C:\Users\you\Desktop\example.pdf example.txt
The -layout switch preserves the layout structure
I mostly use
1. Remove pages
2. Insert pages from one pdf to another
3. Extract text to submit to AI for summary or analysis
4. Sign pdf with imported signatures
Here are all the utilities in Poppler
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
| `pdfattach` | Add an embedded file (attachment) to a PDF |
| `pdfdetach` | List or extract embedded files from a PDF |
| `pdffonts` | List the fonts used in a PDF |
| `pdfimages` | Extract all embedded images from a PDF |
| `pdfinfo` | Display PDF metadata (title, author, pages, etc.) |
| `pdfseparate` | Split a PDF into individual page files |
| `pdfsig` | Verify digital signatures in a PDF |
| `pdftocairo` | Convert PDF to PNG/JPEG/TIFF/PDF/PS/EPS/SVG (via Cairo) |
| `pdftohtml` | Convert PDF to HTML |
| `pdftoppm` | Convert PDF pages to PPM/PNG/JPEG images |
| `pdftops` | Convert PDF to PostScript |
| `pdftotext` | Extract text from a PDF |
| `pdfunite` | Merge multiple PDFs into one |