MarkItDown for converting files into Markdown

How it works

MarkItDown chooses converters based on the input format and returns Markdown suitable for inspection or processing. Its plugin system allows additional conversions.

What you need

Install the extras required by the file formats you expect. Test conversions without external services first if document content must stay on the same machine.

What to try first

Convert a slide deck and a spreadsheet with a small merged-cell table. Check what happens to speaker notes, rows and headings that your downstream workflow needs.

Try one document with a hyperlink and one with a footnote. Verify whether a downstream system can still recover enough information to attribute a quotation.

Where to look for failures

Text conversion flattens some layout. Use a representative document set to test what survives, and enable optional converters only when required.

Related Franklin pages

Compare converted output on a few documents with different structures. Choose according to the information downstream consumers need to recover, such as tables, source locations or heading boundaries.

• Extract text and metadata from supported files through a native library and language bindings. Xberg for document extraction across languages
• Extract document structure, reading order and tables for search or analysis. Docling for structured document conversion

For how recognizing characters fits into the larger document processing workflow, see Franklin’s glossary. Optical character recognition

Project documentation

• Current project README
• README at the reviewed revision