1. Enable PDF-to-text conversion in Google Drive.
You’ll have to enable this setting before we get started. Like most, this setting is under the gear icon at top-right:
Once that setting is configured, Google Drive will start converting PDFs to text for you automatically.
[blog_stripe]2. Upload your PDF to Google Drive.
End of step.
[/blog_stripe]3. Open with Google Docs
Right-click on the PDF file you just uploaded and choose Open with. Since you enabled conversion in step 1, you should have a Google Docs option under Open with.
4. Don’t be fooled
In some cases, the first think you’ll see when the PDF-converted-to-text version opens in a new Google Docs screen is what looks like the old PDF all over again. Sometimes Google converts some of the PDF content to images. In my case, I saw this and thought I had failed. Turns out I just needed to scroll down
Here’s what page 2 of my newly-converted text file looked like:
5. Download converted-PDF text file
If you’re into that sort of thing, you can download a plain text or rich text version of the newly-converted file.
6. Profit
Happy converting.
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