MarkItDown — File to Markdown Converter

Convert virtually any file format to clean, structured Markdown using the markitdown CLI. Prioritizes structural fidelity (headings, tables, lists, links) over visual reproduction.

Source: microsoft/markitdown (118k+ stars)

Supported Formats

Format	Extensions
PDF	.pdf
Word	.docx
Excel	.xlsx, .xls
PowerPoint	.pptx
HTML	.html, .htm
Images	.jpg, .png, .gif (with LLM description)
Audio	.mp3, .wav (with transcription)
Video	.mp4 (with transcription)
Archives	.zip (extracts and converts contents)
Text	.txt, .csv, .json, .xml, .yaml
Code	Most programming language files

CLI Usage

Convert a file

markitdown path/to/file.pdf

Convert with output file

markitdown path/to/file.pdf -o output.md

Convert from stdin

cat file.pdf | markitdown

Convert a URL

markitdown https://example.com/page.html

Workflow

1. User provides a file path or URL to convert
2. Run markitdown <path> via Bash tool to get markdown output
3. Present the converted content or save to a file
4. For large files, pipe through head or extract specific sections

Python API (for programmatic use)

from markitdown import MarkItDown
md = MarkItDown()
result = md.convert("document.pdf")
print(result.text_content)

Notes

• For images: markitdown can optionally use an LLM to describe image contents (requires OpenAI API key via OPENAI_API_KEY env var)
• For audio/video: uses SpeechRecognition for transcription
• Excel files: converts each sheet to a markdown table
• PowerPoint: extracts text from all slides with slide numbers