Convert PDF to Markdown

A PDF stores only characters and their positions, so the structure is inferred. Lines set larger than the body text become headings, ranked by size (the largest is #), and a short bold line on its own becomes the deepest heading. Lines close together form a paragraph, and lines starting with a bullet or a number become a list. Text repeated at the top or bottom of most pages (headers, footers, page numbers) is left out. Where the layout gives no clue, the text stays as a paragraph, so nothing is lost. Tables come out as lines of text for now. Check the result and fix the markup where a guess was wrong.

A scanned PDF holds pictures of its pages, not text, so there is nothing to convert; this tool then points you to OCR PDF, which reads the text from the page images. If only some pages have no text, the rest is converted and a note names the pages that were skipped. A PDF whose text you can select in a PDF app converts here.

The text comes out in the order the PDF stores it, which is usually the reading order. A page set in columns keeps its columns when the producing application wrote them one after the other, as word processors do; a PDF written row by row comes out with the columns interleaved. Vertical Japanese text is kept as plain paragraphs, with no headings or lists guessed. Paragraphs are joined by their line spacing and by where each line ends, so a paragraph that happens to end at the right margin may run into the next one.

Pictures are not included: a PDF places them freely, so where they belong in the text cannot be told. Extract Images from PDF saves them separately. A PDF that needs a password to open, or that restricts copying, is not converted; remove the password with Unlock PDF first. A signed PDF is only read, so its signature is left as it is.

No. Everything runs in your browser, so your files never leave your device. The page only downloads the tool's own code when you add the first file.