RunLocalTools

Document → Markdown Converter

Markdown has become the default format for documentation, static sites, README files, note-taking apps like Obsidian, and just about anything that eventually ends up on GitHub. The problem is that most of the source material people actually have — a Word document, a PDF report, a slide deck, a spreadsheet — isn’t Markdown at all. This tool converts all of them, directly in your browser, without uploading a single file anywhere.

Drop in a .docx, .pdf, .pptx, .xlsx, .xls, .csv, .rtf, .html, or .txt file — or paste raw HTML, or fetch a live webpage by URL — and get back clean, editable Markdown with a live preview sitting right next to it. You can convert several files in one session and download everything together as a single .zip, which most free converters don’t offer at all.

What makes this more useful than a typical converter

Most free document-to-Markdown tools handle exactly one format and stop there. This one handles seven file types plus paste and URL input in a single page, and adds a few things that are usually locked behind paid tiers elsewhere:

  • A Markdown flavor picker — choose GFM (tables, task lists, strikethrough), CommonMark (a leaner, more universal spec — tables get rendered as readable label-value lines since CommonMark has no native table syntax), Obsidian (internal links get converted to [[wiki-style links]]), or Plain (all Markdown syntax stripped, leaving clean readable text).
  • Image handling for Word documents — inline images as base64 directly in the Markdown, extract them as separate files bundled into your download, or skip them entirely.
  • Optional YAML front matter — add a title and date block automatically, which most static-site generators and note apps expect at the top of a Markdown file.
  • Batch conversion — convert a whole folder’s worth of documents in one sitting and export them all as a single .zip instead of downloading one file at a time.

How to use it

  1. Drag and drop one or more supported files onto the tool, or click to browse for them.
  2. Alternatively, paste raw HTML directly, or enter a URL to fetch and convert a live webpage (this only works on sites that allow cross-origin requests from a browser).
  3. Once converted, pick your preferred Markdown flavor from the sidebar — the preview updates instantly.
  4. If you’re converting a Word document with images, choose whether to inline them, extract them as separate files, or skip them.
  5. Edit the Markdown directly in the source panel if anything needs a manual tweak — the live preview reflects your edits immediately.
  6. Download the current document, or — if you converted more than one — download everything together as a single .zip.

Frequently asked questions

Is my document uploaded to a server? No. Every conversion — Word parsing, PDF text extraction, spreadsheet reading, ZIP handling for PowerPoint files — happens entirely in your browser using JavaScript libraries loaded on demand. Your file never leaves your device.

Will this preserve headings and formatting from my PDF? It does its best. PDFs don’t store real heading tags the way Word documents do, so headings are detected heuristically by comparing font size and line length against the rest of the page. It’s usually accurate for straightforward reports, but always worth a quick skim afterward, especially for design-heavy PDFs.

Does it convert tables? Yes, for Word documents, HTML, pasted content, and spreadsheets — these come through as proper Markdown tables in GFM and Obsidian flavor. Since CommonMark has no native table syntax, tables convert to simple readable label-value lines instead when that flavor is selected.

What happens to images in my Word document? You choose: inline them as base64 data directly in the Markdown file (simplest, but makes the file larger), extract them as separate image files bundled alongside your Markdown in a downloaded .zip, or skip them and keep pure text. PDF and PowerPoint files convert as text-only in this version — image extraction currently only applies to Word documents.

Why did fetching a URL fail? Browsers block cross-origin requests to sites that don’t explicitly allow them, which is most of the web. If a URL fetch fails, your best bet is to open the page yourself, copy its HTML (or just paste the visible text), and use the paste-HTML option instead.

Can I convert multiple files at once? Yes — drop several files in together, and each one gets converted and added to a list you can click through. When you’re done, download them all as a single .zip rather than one at a time.

Related tools

If you’re going the other direction — starting from Markdown and need an editor with live preview, export to PDF, or export to standalone HTML — the Markdown editor & viewer covers that. Building a table from scratch instead of extracting one from a document is easier with the Markdown table generator. And if your starting point or destination is a different document format entirely, Word → PDF and PDF → text handle those specific conversions directly, while the XLSX viewer is useful if you just need to look at a spreadsheet without converting it to anything.