Turn a PDF screenplay into plain Fountain.

Drop in a PDF and download a .fountain file you can open in any editor. A PDF does not record what its paragraphs are, so the converter reads the format back out of the columns. It runs inside this page and your script is never uploaded.

Drop your PDF here

You can also pick a file from your computer.

PDF with a text layer. Nothing is uploaded.

From a page of ink to a text file

Reading the columns

A PDF only knows where the ink sits. The converter measures the columns your script uses, recognises them by what they contain rather than by a fixed distance, and reads the format back out. Page numbers, headers and scene numbers are removed, and a speech that a page break had split is rejoined.

Writing it so it comes back

Fountain works on punctuation, so anything that would be read back wrongly is marked as it is written. A scene heading that does not start with INT or EXT gets a leading dot, an action line in capitals gets an exclamation mark so it is not mistaken for a character, and a transition that does not end in TO: gets a greater-than sign. None of those marks show when the file is read.

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Questions about PDF and Fountain

I write my own films in Google Docs, so I built the tools I kept wishing existed.

Ask me something
Why convert to Fountain rather than to a Word file?
Because a .fountain file is plain text and stays readable in anything, including a text editor you already have. If what you want is to keep writing with proper margins, convert to Google Docs instead, and the free tool for that is one click away below.
How accurate is it?
On a PDF exported from screenwriting software, it is close to exact. On a PDF typed by hand in a word processor, expect to repair a few paragraphs. What it found is shown before you download anything.
My PDF is a scan. Will it work?
No. A scan is a picture of a script, so there is no text in it to read. Optical character recognition would come first, and it usually costs more repair than it saves.
Is my screenplay uploaded anywhere?
No. Your browser does the reading and the writing. The file never leaves your computer and nothing is stored.

The other conversions

Fountain to Final Draft

Your .fountain file, typed paragraph by paragraph into a .fdx.

Final Draft to Fountain

Your .fdx as plain text you can still read in twenty years.

PDF to Final Draft

A PDF read back into a .fdx you can keep writing in.

Final Draft to Google Docs

Your .fdx in a Doc that already has the right margins.

Fountain to Google Docs

Your .fountain in a Doc that already has the right margins.

The converter itself

Every format in, every format out, on one page.