What happens if the PDF does not have a built-in outline?

The tool will notify you that no embedded bookmarks or outline structure were found. In that case, you may want to use our PDF OCR tool first to create a text-layer document, then build an outline manually.

Does it support multi-level outlines with nested subheadings?

Yes. The extractor fully preserves the hierarchy depth — chapters, sections, subsections — and represents nesting through indentation in text output or nested objects in JSON and XML.

What does the JSON output look like?

Each heading is represented as an object with title, level, and page properties. Top-level sections contain a children array for nested subheadings. The format is standard and easy to parse with any JSON library.

Can I extract an outline from a scanned PDF?

Scanned PDFs do not have embedded outlines, so extraction is not possible directly. Run the file through PDF OCR Pro first to create a text-layer PDF, then structure the content manually.

Is the tool free to use?

Yes, single-file outline extraction is completely free. Batch processing across multiple PDFs and API access for automation are available on premium plans.

How accurate is the extraction on complex academic documents?

Accuracy depends on how consistently the source document applies heading styles. PDFs produced from properly structured Word or LaTeX sources yield near-perfect results. Manually formatted PDFs may have inconsistencies in the extracted hierarchy.

PDF outline extractor — Free Online

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Extract the outline (bookmark/table of contents) hierarchy

💡 Use Cases

Academic: Extract the outline of a 200-page paper → Markdown → Notion/Obsidian.
Lawyer: Pull the table of contents from a 500-page case file → JSON → your own system.
Editor/Author: Book PDF outline → TXT → revision plan.

No outline? Add one with the PDF Bookmark Editor.

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PDF Outline / Table of Contents Extractor

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