MarkItDown
Microsoft's free command-line tool that turns Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files into clean Markdown that any AI can read, offline.
What you can do with it
- Paste a Word report or spreadsheet into ChatGPT, Claude or a local model with its headings and tables intact
- Turn lecture slides into text with the speaker notes included
- Convert a whole folder of office files to text in one command
Worth knowingPhotos and scanned PDFs come out empty (no built-in OCR), old .doc files aren't supported, and with uv the README's [all] install quietly gives an old version; list the formats instead.
The full tutorial
01Install MarkItDownFREE02Convert your first Word fileMEMBERS03Spreadsheets, slides and PDFsMEMBERS04Convert a whole folder in one goMEMBERS05Give it to your AIMEMBERS06Optional: let Claude Desktop convert files itselfMEMBERS
Turn any Word, Excel, PowerPoint or PDF into text your AI can actually read · ~35 min · tested 2026-10-09
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