Fix ChatGPT PDF Error: "No Text Could Be Extracted from This File"

If you’ve tried uploading a scanned handwritten PDF into ChatGPT and received the dreaded message:

“No text could be extracted from this file.”

You’re not alone. Many users, even those with ChatGPT Plus, have run into the same roadblock and stuck with pdf not uploaded to ChatGPT. This is not happengin with app the PDF files, but some PDF files are failed to upload on ChatGPT and gives error “No Text Could Be Extracted from This File”.

The error “No Text Could Be Extracted from This File” is seen on ChatGPT desktop, Android and iPhone version as well.

How to fix ChatGPT "No Text Could Be Extracted from This File" for PDF Files

Why Does This Happen?

This error “No Text Could Be Extracted from This File” is expected because of how ChatGPT handles PDFs.

ChatGPT can only extract text from searchable PDFs (files that already contain selectable, digital text).
A scanned handwritten or image-based PDF is essentially just a picture inside a PDF wrapper.
While the document might be perfectly legible to the human eye—and even easily processed by other OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software—ChatGPT itself does not run OCR on uploaded PDFs.

So, the error doesn’t mean your file is broken. It simply means the PDF doesn’t have any embedded text for ChatGPT to extract.

How to fix ChatGPT “No text could be extracted from this file.”

✅ Method 1: Use OCR Software Before Uploading

Run your scanned PDF through any OCR tool (like Adobe Acrobat, Google Drive OCR, or free online converters). This will convert the handwritten content into searchable text, which ChatGPT can then read.

✅ Method 2: Print-to-PDF Trick

Some users have had success with this approach:

Right-click on your PDF → Open with → choose your browser (Chrome/Edge).
Click the Print icon.
Select Microsoft Print to PDF (or equivalent).

Fix ChatGPT PDF Error: "No Text Could Be Extracted from This File"

Save the file with a new name.
Upload the new file to ChatGPT.

This won’t magically read handwriting, but it sometimes restructures the file so text-based portions become extractable.

✅ Method 3: Copy-Paste or Image Upload

If possible, copy-paste the text directly into ChatGPT.
Or, upload images of the handwritten document (ChatGPT Vision can analyze those better).

Conclusion

ChatGPT is powerful for analyzing and working with PDFs, but it isn’t an OCR engine. To process handwritten or scanned documents, you’ll first need to run them through OCR software to convert the content into searchable text.