Why did I get an empty file?

The PDF is probably a scan. Scanned pages are pictures of text, so there is no text layer to extract.

Will the layout be preserved?

No. You get the text, not the page design.

What is the JSON option for?

It keeps each page separate, which is useful when you need to know where text came from.

extract

Extract Text From a PDF

Pull the text out of a PDF as a plain text or JSON file.

Runs in your browser

How it works

This reads the text layer that the PDF already contains. Documents made from a word processor have one; documents made by scanning paper usually do not, and will produce nothing until they have been through OCR. The tool tells you when that has happened rather than handing you an empty file without explanation.

Related tools

PDF Word Counter

/pdf-word-counter

PDF to Images

/pdf-to-images

Inspect PDF

/inspect-pdf

Questions

Why did I get an empty file?: The PDF is probably a scan. Scanned pages are pictures of text, so there is no text layer to extract.
Will the layout be preserved?: No. You get the text, not the page design.
What is the JSON option for?: It keeps each page separate, which is useful when you need to know where text came from.