PDF to Markdown
Headings and tables kept, document not uploaded
…
- 1
Drop the PDF in
Read from disk, never sent anywhere. That matters more than usual here, because the documents people convert to Markdown are usually the ones they are about to paste somewhere else.
- 2
It keeps the shape
Headings stay headings, lists stay lists, and tables come out as Markdown tables rather than as a pile of loose cells. On a fifteen page paper with four tables and three two column pages it took under a fifth of a second.
- 3
Copy it or download it
As a .md file, or straight to the clipboard. If you only want the words and none of the structure, PDF to Text is the same read without it.
FAQ
- Why Markdown rather than text?
- Because the structure is information. A table flattened into a paragraph has lost which number belongs to which row, and a document with no headings has lost where each section begins. Markdown keeps both in something you can paste into notes, into a wiki, or into a model that reads it better for having them.
- Is my document uploaded?
- No. It is read on this page, on your machine. Nothing is sent and nothing is stored, and that is worth checking rather than believing: open the network panel and drop a file in.
- How good are the tables?
- Good on tables that are actually tables, with ruled or aligned columns. A layout that only looks like a table to a human, spaced out by hand, is not one in the file, and it will come out as lines of text. Check any table you are going to rely on.
- What about scanned PDFs?
- There is nothing to convert. A scan holds a picture of a page and no text at all, so the page will tell you that rather than hand back an empty file. Image to Text reads pictures of words, which is the tool for that.
- Is it the same reader as PDF to Text?
- The same read, and the difference is what is kept. This page keeps the headings, lists and tables; the other throws the structure away and gives you the words. Neither uploads anything.