RunLocalTools

HTML / Rich Text to Markdown Converter — Free & Accurate

Paste formatted text from Word, Google Docs, or a webpage — or raw HTML — and get clean Markdown out. Tables, nested lists, code blocks, and task lists all convert correctly.

What it does

This tool turns formatted content into clean Markdown. Paste rich text copied from Word, Google Docs, or a webpage — keeping its bold, links, and lists intact — or paste raw HTML source directly, and get properly structured Markdown back: headings, nested lists, tables, code blocks, blockquotes, and task list checkboxes all convert correctly, not just plain text with the tags stripped off.

How it works

There are two input modes. Rich paste reads the actual formatting your browser preserves when you paste from a source like Word or a webpage — this is usually far more accurate than pasting into a plain textarea first, which throws that formatting away before you ever see it. Raw HTML mode is a plain textarea for pasting HTML source directly.

Either way, the converter walks the parsed content structurally rather than doing a find-and-replace on tags: nested bullet and numbered lists keep their indentation, tables become proper GitHub-flavored Markdown tables with column alignment preserved, code blocks keep their language tag for syntax highlighting, and checkboxes become - [ ] / - [x] task list items. Common Word-paste artifacts — the invisible style spans and <o:p> tags Word inserts — are stripped automatically so they don’t clutter the output. Anything in your original text that happens to look like Markdown syntax (a stray # or a line starting with a hyphen) is escaped so it renders as plain text instead of accidentally becoming a heading or list.

How to use it

  1. Choose Rich paste if you’re copying from Word, Google Docs, or a webpage, or Raw HTML if you have HTML source to paste directly.
  2. Paste your content into the left panel.
  3. The Markdown output appears instantly on the right — no button to click.
  4. Adjust the options (bullet style, heading style, link style, code fence) if you need output that matches a particular Markdown flavor.
  5. Copy the result or download it as a .md file.

Supported elements

Headings, bold/italic/strikethrough, inline and fenced code (with language detection), links (inline or reference-style), images, ordered and unordered lists with unlimited nesting, task list checkboxes, blockquotes (including nested), tables with column alignment, and horizontal rules. Unsupported elements like embedded video or forms are stripped by default, or can be kept as raw HTML with a toggle.

FAQ

Why does rich paste work better than pasting into a plain text box first? A plain textarea can only ever hold plain text — the moment you paste into one, your browser has already thrown away the bold, links, and list structure. Rich paste mode captures that formatting before it’s lost.

Will my table’s column alignment be preserved? Yes, if the source table specifies alignment (via the align attribute or a text-align style), it carries over as the appropriate :---, :---:, or ---: marker in the Markdown table.

What happens to a table cell that spans multiple columns? Standard Markdown tables can’t represent merged cells, so a spanned cell’s content appears once in its starting column and the remaining spanned columns are left blank in that row, keeping the table’s column count consistent.

Does it handle Word’s messy paste formatting? Yes — Word tends to wrap pasted text in extra styling spans and <o:p> tags. These are stripped automatically so they don’t show up as clutter in your Markdown.

Can I keep an embedded video or iframe in the output? By default those are dropped since Markdown has no equivalent, but you can check “Keep unsupported tags as raw HTML” to preserve them as literal HTML in the output for renderers that support mixed HTML/Markdown.

Is anything I paste sent anywhere? No — the entire conversion happens in your browser using your browser’s own HTML parser. Nothing is uploaded.

Once you have your Markdown, the Markdown editor & viewer is a good next stop for a live rendered preview or exporting to PDF. If you’re starting from a Word, PDF, or PowerPoint file instead of pasted content, the Document → Markdown converter handles full files directly.