Convert Word to Markdown
Turn a .docx file into clean Markdown without uploading it. The
conversion runs in this tab, so the document never leaves your device.
Drop a .docx file here
or
Only .docx: the zipped format Word has used since 2007
Converted in this tab. The file is never uploaded.
How it works
A .docx is a zip archive of XML. The file is unzipped in your
browser, the document XML is mapped to HTML, and that HTML is converted to
Markdown. Three steps, all local, no server involved at any point.
What carries across
- Headings, at the levels Word recorded them
- Bold, italic and inline code
- Ordered, unordered and nested lists
- Tables, links and blockquotes
- Images, embedded so the markdown stays self-contained
Word formatting with no Markdown equivalent is dropped rather than approximated: fonts, colors, text boxes, headers and footers. That is a property of Markdown, not a limitation of this converter.
Element by element
| In the Word document | In the Markdown |
|---|---|
| Heading 1-6 styles | # to ######, at the level Word recorded |
| Big bold text that is not a heading style | A bold paragraph: Word never called it a heading |
| Bold, italic, strikethrough | Kept |
| Bulleted and numbered lists, nested | Kept, with indentation |
| Tables | Pipe tables; merged cells flatten |
| Hyperlinks | [text](url) |
| Images | Embedded in the file as data, so nothing is left pointing at your machine |
| Footnotes and endnotes | Their text, at the end |
| Comments | Dropped |
| Tracked changes | The accepted version, silently |
| Headers, footers, page numbers | Dropped: Markdown has no page |
| Fonts, colors, sizes, alignment | Dropped |
| Text boxes, shapes, SmartArt | Dropped, including any text inside them |
| Equations | Dropped |
Tracked changes and comments are worth a second look
Two of those rows matter more than the rest, because they are silent. A document with unresolved tracked changes converts as though every change were accepted, and comments simply vanish. Neither produces a warning: the Markdown just quietly represents one particular version of the document.
If the file came from someone else and you are not sure, accept or reject
the changes in Word first, so that what you convert is the version you
think it is. This cuts the other way too: a Word file you are about to
share is often safer as Markdown, because a .docx carries its
revision history and its comments along with it.
Why big bold text is not a heading
The single most common surprise. Word has real heading styles and it also lets you make a line 18pt and bold, and those look identical on the page and are completely different in the file. Markdown can only read what the file says, so a document formatted by eye converts to a wall of paragraphs.
The fix is in Word rather than here: select the line, apply Heading 1 or Heading 2 from the styles gallery, and convert again. If the document is long, Word's navigation pane is the quickest test: anything missing from it will be missing from the Markdown.
Going the other way
Markdown to Word does the reverse, and
produces a real .docx with Word heading styles rather than an
HTML file wearing the extension. The round trip is not lossless in either
direction (Markdown has no page layout and Word has no fenced code block
) but headings, lists, tables and links survive both ways.
Common questions
- How do I convert a Word document to Markdown?
- Drop the .docx file onto the box above, or choose it with the file picker. The markdown appears on the right, ready to copy, download or open in the full editor.
- Is my document uploaded?
- No. The .docx is unzipped and converted by JavaScript running in your own browser tab. Nothing is sent to a server, so a confidential contract or an unpublished draft is safe to convert here.
- What survives the conversion?
- Headings, bold and italic, ordered and unordered lists, tables, links, blockquotes and code formatting all carry across. Word styling that has no Markdown equivalent (fonts, colors, text boxes) is dropped, because Markdown has no way to express it.
- What about images in the document?
- Images are extracted as embedded data, so the markdown stays self-contained rather than pointing at files you would have to move separately. That makes the output larger but portable.
- Can I convert the old .doc format?
- No. Only .docx, the zipped XML format Word has used since 2007, can be read in the browser. Open an older .doc in Word or LibreOffice and save it as .docx first.
- Does it work with Google Docs?
- Yes, indirectly: in Google Docs choose File, Download, Microsoft Word (.docx), then drop that file here.
Sources
- mammoth.jsthe .docx reader this conversion uses
- Microsoft Learn: structure of a WordprocessingML documentwhat is inside a .docx