pdftotext

I had a 96 page pdf file to convert to text, and it was named 'UK Households 2005.pdf' but pdftotext couldn't convert it at all. So I cd'd into the directory where the pdf file was located, and renamed the file as 'UKHouseholds2005.pdf', and then ran pdftotext on it, and it converted very easily.

And this is a good link for other linux programs that can work on pdf files http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PDF_software#Unix_.2F_Linux