Convert a Word Document into MD

docx2md.md

Converting a Word Document to Markdown in One Move

The Problem

A lot of important government documents are created and saved in Microsoft Word (*.docx). But Microsoft Word is a proprietary format, and it's not really useful for presenting documents on the web. So, I wanted to find a way to convert a .docx file into markdown.

Installing Pandoc

On a mac you can use homebrew by running the command brew install pandoc.

The Solution

As it turns out, there are several open-source tools that allow for conversion between file types. Pandoc is one of them, and it's powerful. In fact, pandoc's website says "If you need to convert files from one markup format into another, pandoc is your swiss-army knife." Pandoc can convert from markdown into .docx, and it also works in the other direction.

Example

Say you have the Council Rules in a Word Document named "test.docx." (For a real-life example, visit http://github.com/vzvenyach/Council_Rules/). Now, you run the following at the command line:

pandoc -f docx -t markdown -o test.md test.docx

Out is a beautiful markdown file. Admittedly, there's a bit of junk at the top with the Table of Contents. I deleted this when I rendered it nicely with strapdown.js. In the end, here's my nicely rendered version of the Rules.

Thank you for this!

Thank you!!!!!!

Doesnt work too good with Tables, all other stuff is great!

I am new to markdown and trying to import a Word document to an outline webapp (RemNote) that imports markdowns.
A question: If the Word document has hierarchical headings H1, H2, H3, does the markdown document comes with headings too? Or does in come indented (the text between two H1 indented below, the text below two H2 with a double indentation, etc)?
Thanks