How to clean text copied from a PDF
A paragraph copied from a PDF may arrive with a line break after every printed line. Joining those lines improves readability, but removing every break can also merge paragraphs, headings and lists. Start with a small passage and review the result against the PDF.
1. Join wrapped lines and keep paragraph gaps
To read the document directly, select Open PDF in Clean PDF text. Choose a PDF smaller than 10 MB with at most 100 pages. Its selectable text is extracted on this device; the document is not uploaded. Imported paragraph gaps are estimated from line spacing. Check them against the source, especially around headings, page boundaries and columns. If text is already in the editor, replacement requires confirmation.
Open Clean PDF text and paste the copied passage. Join lines, Keep paragraphs separate and Remove extra spaces are selected. A single line break becomes a space; an empty line keeps the paragraphs apart.
Copied passage
This report describes the survey results. The next section covers the limitations.
Cleaned passage
This report describes the survey results. The next section covers the limitations.
If the copied text has no blank lines between paragraphs, the cleaner cannot infer where they belong. Insert those gaps before joining, or clean one paragraph at a time. Leave Join lines off for addresses, poetry or lists where line endings carry meaning.
2. Repair split words only when necessary
A printed word may be divided by a hyphen at the end of a line:
The inter- national team published the report.
Select Repair words split with hyphens to produce:
The international team published the report.
This option is off by default. It joins letter sequences separated by a hyphen and a line break, and removes soft hyphens inside words. It does not check a dictionary. A real compound such as well- followed by known can become wellknown. Review repaired words before copying the result.
3. Check headings, lists and columns
PDF extraction can mix two columns together or insert page numbers in a sentence. Joining lines cannot reconstruct reading order. Copy each column separately where possible, remove page furniture manually and compare the cleaned passage with the document.
- Keep headings separate from the paragraph below.
- Preserve list items that need their own lines.
- Check names, numbers, punctuation and repaired compound words.
- Restore paragraph boundaries that were lost during copying.
Use Compare text to see changes between the original and cleaned versions. For a passage that only needs wrapped lines removed, use Remove line breaks.
What this tool can read
The cleaner reads selectable PDF text, pasted text and text files in your browser. Password-protected PDFs need an unlocked copy. It does not perform optical character recognition: if a scanned page has no selectable text, extract the text with an OCR tool first, then review recognition errors separately. If only some pages lack text, import reports those pages so you can check what is missing.