Why convert XPS to TXT?
Extracting to TXT lets you search, copy, or process the document's text content without installing an XPS viewer. It is also the fastest way to feed XPS text into scripts or other tools that only accept plain text input.
How to convert XPS to TXT
XPSView APP
Open the .xps file in XPSView and use its text export option to extract the document's text content to a .txt file.
XPS-to-PDF APP
Convert the .xps to PDF first with XPS-to-PDF, then extract text from the resulting PDF using any PDF text extractor for better fidelity.
XPS-to-PDF for Mac APP
On macOS, convert the .xps to PDF with XPS-to-PDF for Mac, then extract text from the PDF.
Programs that convert XPS
About these formats
.XPS
XML Paper Specification Document
An XPS file is Microsoft's fixed-layout document format, created by the "Microsoft XPS Document Writer" virtual printer on Windows. On Windows 10 and 11 it no longer opens by default, so…
Open .XPS details →
.TXT
Plain Text File
A TXT file is plain, unformatted text - the simplest document format on any computer. Double-click it: Windows opens it in Notepad, macOS in TextEdit, Linux in gedit. Nothing to install. If…
Open .TXT details →Quality & what to watch
- XPS stores absolutely positioned glyph runs, not flowing paragraphs; text extraction may produce incorrect reading order on multi-column layouts or tables.
- No formatting survives - fonts, sizes, bold/italic, colors, images, and page structure are all discarded in the .txt output.
- If the XPS was created from a scanned raster image rather than text glyphs, extraction returns an empty or near-empty file; OCR software would be needed in that case.
