How to easily Select All Text in a PDF document easily

I frequently work with PDFs for work; sometimes I need to select all of the text at once for editing, reformatting, or quoting. However, whenever I tried to select text from multiple pages, only the text from the currently visible page was selected. When you scroll up or down to another page, the selection (highlighted text) suddenly breaks, which is frustrating. Today, I'll show you how to easily select all text in a PDF using a web browser like Google or UPDF, which is an all-in-one tool for working with PDFs.

Part 1. Why can’t I Select All PDF Text beyond just 1 page?

When I open a PDF and hit Ctrl+A, it only highlights text from the current page. This usually happens because PDFs were created as a paper analogue. Where each page is a separate entity, and by selecting all text, the single page is selected. Other possible reasons are:

• The PDF viewer is limited—Some apps only allow page-by-page text selection. Or may restrict editing/selection features.
• The file is scanned or image-based – If your PDF is basically a set of pictures, there’s no actual "text". What you see as “text” is an image on each page, and selection will not work until you run OCR(Optical Character Recognition).
• The PDF has restrictions – Some PDFs have copy or selection permissions disabled.

Part 2. How to select text on All Pages in a PDF document?

1. Using UPDF

With UPDF, you can select all the text in a multi-page PDF more easily. UPDF is not just a PDF viewer but a complete PDF editor. To select all the text, first convert it into Word/TXT. With the conversion tools in UPDF, you can easily convert PDFs into the desired format.

1. Click on tools in the upper corner, then select Word from the PDF converter menu.

• Select Word(.docx) from the output format. You can also choose TXT format on this pop-up window. Moreover, you can turn on the OCR function for scanned PDFs or image-based PDFs to efficiently extract text for editing. Selecting the correct language is very important for OCR text recognition.

UPDF provides extensive customization features such as:

• Page range: From here, you can select a specific page, an even or odd page to convert.
• Word content style: You can either select to retain classic flow with automatic adjustment or keep it the same as the text box style.
• Layout setting: It allows you to keep or discard pictures in the PDF, adjust balance quality, and apply compression if needed to reduce file size. You can also set your preferred resolution value in dpi (dots per inch) for image resolution.

• After making all selections, click on Apply and open the converted file in Word or another text editor. Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Macs) to select all text.

The best part? UPDF keeps the layout almost the same, even after conversion, so you’re not left with messy text.

With UPDF, an extensive PDF tool, you can also convert many files at once. The batch convert feature in UPDF makes the conversion of multiple files easy and quick, simplifying the selection of all text in PDF documents.

Batch convert steps:

1. Open UPDF and click on the tools. Select “Convert” under multiple-file operation.

• Click on Add files and import multiple files at once for conversion into Word/TXT.

3.  If it is a scanned document, simply toggle the OCR button and select the language to accurately identify all the text, making the PDF both editable and searchable.

4. After conversion, open the file in Word or another text editor. Then, select all text using keyboard shortcuts, such as Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Macs), to highlight all of the text.

2. Using Chrome

If your PDF isn’t scanned or locked, Chrome can be a quick solution for opening and selecting PDF documents.

Steps:

1. Locate your PDF on your computer.
   1. Right-click the file and choose “Open with” → “Google Chrome”.

• Once it opens in Chrome, you can select all text by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+A (Windows) or ⌘ Command+A (Mac) to highlight all text.

• For copying, press keyboard shortcut  Ctrl+C(Windows) or ⌘ Command+C(Mac).

This works well for text-based PDFs, but Chrome still struggles with scanned PDFs or those with restrictions. That’s why I often switch to UPDF for more control, such as OCR and advanced editing features.

Part 3. How to Select Text Within a Page?

If you just want to select text within a page, UPDF can be a good choice. Simply follow the steps below:

1. First, open the PDF in UPDF with the "Open File" option. You can also drag and drop your file directly from your device.

• From tools, switch to “Edit” mode.

• Then select “Insert & Edit Text”. Press Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Mac) to select all the text on the page.

Conclusion:

Selecting text from a single or multiple pages in a PDF file is much easier with the latest tools and technologies. Google Chrome is fine for quick, simple tasks, but for scanned files, multi-page selection, and batch processing, UPDF is the clear winner. For more customization and going beyond text selection, you can use UPDF, which gives you much more control in the form of advanced features like OCR, retaining word style, and adjusting images in a PDF.