Use a browser-based PDF text extractor that pulls the plain text out of the document on your own device, then copy it or download it as a TXT file. It is free with no sign-up, and because it runs locally the PDF is never uploaded. Note that it reads the text stored in the PDF, so a pure photo scan with no text layer will not produce text.
Copying text straight out of a PDF viewer often produces broken line endings, shuffled columns and stray characters. A dedicated extractor walks the document's text content page by page and hands you the plain text in one pass, ready to paste into a document, a translator or a script.
PDFs store text in two very different ways. Digitally created files, like exports from Word or invoices from software, carry a real text layer that extracts cleanly. A scanned PDF is just photographs of pages; there is no text inside it to extract, and turning pictures into words requires OCR, which is a different kind of tool. Checking whether you can select text in a viewer tells you which kind you have.
Only if the scan already contains a text layer. A pure image scan has no embedded text, and reading it would require OCR.
No. The text is extracted in your browser and the document never leaves your device.
The plain text of the document, which you can copy directly or save as a TXT file.