How to use the text extractor
- Drop an .hwp or .hwpx file onto the drop zone. DOCX, PPTX, PDF, XLSX, CSV, TXT and MD files work the same way.
- When analysis finishes, the body text fills the box on the left, and the character, word and line counts appear on the right.
- Edit the text in the box if needed, then click Download .txt to save it, or Copy to put it on your clipboard.
This is useful when you need to paste an official notice into an email, feed a report into a translator or AI summarizer, or search several HWP files for a phrase. It gives you the same result as "Save as text" in Hangul, with no software to install.
How the extraction works
The extractor uses the open-source rhwp engine (MIT License), which runs as WebAssembly in your browser.
- It reads the HWP container (or the HWPX ZIP archive), checks whether the document is compressed or password-protected and decompresses the body sections.
- It lays out the document into pages the same way Hangul does.
- It collects the text of each page in reading order, including text inside tables, and joins the pages together.
If the engine cannot run, for example in a very old browser, a lightweight built-in parser reads the paragraph text records (HWPTAG_PARA_TEXT) of HWP 5.0 files directly, skipping control characters for tables, footnotes and fields while keeping tabs and line breaks.
Tips for using the extracted text
- Tables: text inside tables comes out cell by cell. If you need the table structure, copying the table from Hangul into a spreadsheet works better.
- Footnotes and headers: they may appear within the body text, so delete what you do not need before saving.
- Removing personal data: before sharing extracted text, use the privacy masking tool to hide resident registration numbers, phone numbers and email addresses in one go.
When extraction does not work
- Distribution documents: HWP files saved as "distribution" documents with copy protection have an encrypted body and cannot be extracted.
- Password-protected documents: use the HWP viewer, which asks for the password and opens the file in your browser.
When extraction fails, an error message explains why, and the file is never sent anywhere.
Frequently asked questions
Is text inside tables extracted?
Yes. Paragraphs inside table cells are extracted in document order. The row and column structure is simplified into line breaks.
What encoding is the TXT file?
The downloaded TXT file is UTF-8, which opens correctly in Notepad on Windows, TextEdit on macOS and most other programs.
Why can't distribution HWP files be extracted?
Distribution documents have an encrypted body so they can only be opened in programs the author allows. We respect that intent and do not provide a way around it.
Can I convert several files at once?
Files are processed one at a time. Drop another file and it replaces the current one immediately.