What converts well, and what does not
A PDF does not store a document's structure. It stores where each piece of text is drawn, in which font and at what size, so the converter reads the structure back from the page the way you would:
| On the page | In the Markdown |
|---|---|
| Text set larger than the body | Headings, the largest first |
| Lines close together | One paragraph, with words broken by a hyphen joined again |
| Lines starting with a bullet or a number | List items |
| Text in a monospaced font | Code, its indents kept |
| Bold and italic fonts | **bold** and _italic_ |
| Clickable links | [words](address) |
| A header, footer or page number on every page | Left out |
It works best on text PDFs: ones exported from Word, Google Docs, Pages, a website or a Markdown tool. Two things it does not do:
- Tables arrive as lines of text, a row to a line. A PDF draws a table as text set in columns, and guessing its cells goes wrong often enough to do more harm than good. Rebuild a table with the Markdown table generator, which takes the rows pasted in.
- Scanned PDFs are pictures of pages with no text in them. The converter says so rather than returning an empty document; run a scan through a text recognition app first.
Check the headings once after converting: a document whose headings are only bold, at the body's size, has nothing to tell them apart from bold text.
From Word, it is better to start with the .docx
A PDF is the last stop for a document, and some structure is lost on the way there. If you have the Word file the PDF was made from, the Word to Markdown converter reads its real headings, lists and tables. To make a PDF from Markdown instead, use Markdown to PDF.
Questions
How do I convert a PDF to Markdown?
Choose Open PDF above, or drop the file on the left pane. The Markdown
appears on the right; check it once, then copy it or download a .md file.
Can it convert scanned PDFs?
No. A scan holds images of text rather than text. Run it through a text recognition (OCR) app first, then convert the PDF it produces.
Is my PDF uploaded?
No. It is read in this browser tab, and nothing is sent to a server.