Word to Markdown converter

How it works

1. 1

   Drop your Word files

   One .docx or up to twenty at once, each up to 50MB: reports, notes, manuals, proposals, meeting minutes.

2. 2

   Your browser converts them

   Word's heading styles become # headings, and bold, italics, links, lists and tables become their Markdown equivalents. Images and page layout are left out.

3. 3

   Copy or download the .md

   Preview the Markdown, copy it to your clipboard, or save a .md file for each document. Nothing is uploaded or stored.

How Word styles map to Markdown

A .docx file is a ZIP archive of XML files describing every paragraph, its style and its formatting. This converter reads that structure rather than how the page looks, so a paragraph styled Heading 2 becomes a ## heading even if it uses a custom font, and a paragraph that is only large and bold stays a normal paragraph with bold text. For the cleanest result, use Word's built-in heading styles in the original document.

The output uses ATX headings (#), - for bullets, ** for bold, * for italics and GitHub-style tables. Trailing spaces are removed, blocks are separated by a single blank line, and Word's hidden bookmarks are stripped out.

Things to check after converting

Markdown has no page layout, so headers, footers, columns, text boxes, colors and fonts are left out. A table of contents comes through as plain text, since its page numbers and links point at a layout that no longer exists. Footnote markers stay in the text and the notes appear at the end. Comments are left out and tracked changes are read as if accepted, so review any changes in Word first if that matters.

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For other formats, use PDF to Markdown for PDFs and HTML to Markdown for web pages. The token counter tells you whether the Markdown fits a model's context window, and the text splitter breaks a long document into parts.

Frequently asked questions

How do I convert a Word document to Markdown?

Drop the .docx file on this page. In a few seconds you get a Markdown preview you can copy, plus a Download .md button that saves a file with the same name. There is nothing to install and no account, and the conversion happens in your browser tab rather than on a server.

What formatting is kept?

Paragraphs styled Heading 1 to Heading 6 become # to ###### headings, and the Title style becomes a # heading. Bold becomes **text**, italic becomes *text*, strikethrough becomes ~~text~~, and hyperlinks become [text](url). Bulleted and numbered lists, including nested ones, become - and 1. items. Text in a Code style or a monospace font such as Courier New or Consolas becomes inline code or a fenced code block.

How are tables converted?

Every Word table becomes a GitHub-style Markdown table, with the first row used as the header row. Text from several paragraphs in one cell is joined onto one line, since Markdown cells can't hold line breaks. Merged cells are split into ordinary cells, so tables with complex merging may need tidying by hand.

What happens to images?

Images, charts and drawings are left out rather than embedded, because Markdown can only link to images, and pasting them in as encoded data would make the file huge. The converter tells you how many images it left out of each document. If a document is only scanned page images, there is no text to convert.

Can it convert old .doc files?

No. The converter reads .docx, the format Word has used since 2007. Older .doc files use a different binary format. Open the file in Word, Google Docs or LibreOffice, save it as .docx, and drop the new file here. Google Docs users can download a document as .docx from File, then Download.

Is my document uploaded anywhere?

No. The .docx is read and converted inside your browser, and the .md file is created on your device. The page loads the converter code the first time you use it, but your document is never sent to our servers or anyone else's, so it stays on your device the whole time.

Why convert Word to Markdown for ChatGPT or Claude?

Markdown keeps the structure of a document, such as headings, lists and tables, in plain text that any AI tool can read. It is also a common format for knowledge files, docs sites and note apps like Obsidian. Check the size of the result with the token counter, and split long documents into parts with the text splitter.

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