Google Docs can copy as Markdown itself, so why use this?

It can, since July 2024: Tools → Preferences → Enable Markdown, then select text and right-click → Copy as Markdown, or File → Download → Markdown for a whole document. If that option is available to you, it is the shortest route. This page is for when it is not (an account or Workspace policy without it), for text copied from Word, Notion, Confluence or a web page, which Docs cannot help with, and for seeing the Markdown before it lands somewhere.

Why does the output have no headings or bold when I paste?

Because the paste carried no formatting. A copy from the document body carries an HTML version of the text with the styles in it; a copy from a plain-text field, a terminal, or a “paste without formatting” action carries only the words. The status line says so when that happens. Copy again from the document itself, and paste with a normal Ctrl+V, not Ctrl+Shift+V.

Do tables, nested lists and links survive?

Yes. Tables become Markdown tables; Docs marks header cells bold rather than as headers, so the first row is promoted and its bold removed. Nested lists keep their depth, whether the paste nests them properly or the Docs way (a list beside an item, with aria-level). Links are unwrapped from the google.com/url redirect Docs puts around every address, so the Markdown points at the real page.

Anything Markdown cannot say: underline, colours, font sizes, alignment, and Docs’ Title and Subtitle styles (they arrive as large text, not as headings, so they become paragraphs; add a # yourself). Images are kept as links to the address Docs provides. Comments, footnotes and suggestions are not part of what Docs copies, so they never reach this page.

Is my document uploaded anywhere?

No. The paste goes into a box on this page and JavaScript in the page reads it; there is no server. Nothing you paste leaves your browser, and reloading the page discards it.

Google Docs to Markdown Converter

How to use

In Google Docs (or Word, Notion, Confluence, a web page), select the text you want and copy it with Ctrl+C.
Click the left box and paste with Ctrl+V. The box shows the paste with its formatting; the Markdown appears on the right at once.
Read the line under the Markdown: it lists what was unwrapped, dropped or approximated (redirect links, underline, a table with no header row).
Copy Markdown (or Ctrl+Enter in the box) and paste into your README, wiki, issue or note. Download .md saves a file.

What a Google Docs copy really contains

Copy a paragraph in Google Docs and the clipboard holds two things: the plain words, and an HTML version of them that Docs generates on the fly. That HTML is not the tidy  and <h2>a web page would use. Bold is a ; the whole copy sits inside a  tag whose style says not bold; every link goes through a google.com/url?q= redirect; a nested list is a second list placed beside the parent item with an aria-level attribute; and one bold phrase can arrive as three spans. A converter that only looks at tag names sees none of it.

This tool reads the inline styles as well as the tags, so it produces the Markdown you would have written by hand: # headings, **bold**, *italic*, ~~strikethrough~~, `code` for Courier New, real link addresses, nested bullets and numbers, tables with a header row. It says what it had to approximate. The reverse trip is Markdown to Google Docs; when the paste is going into a chat rather than a README, Markdown to Plain Text takes the result from here.

Example

Load sample fills the box with what Docs puts on the clipboard for a short launch plan: 2headings, a paragraph with bold, italic, monospace and a link, a nested list, and a table. Abridged, the HTML looks like:

<b style="font-weight:normal;" id="docs-internal-guid-…">
  <h1 dir="ltr" style="…"><span style="font-size:20pt;font-family:Arial;font-weight:400;…">Q3 launch plan</span></h1>
  <p dir="ltr" style="…">
    <span style="font-size:11pt;font-weight:400;…">We ship on </span>
    <span style="font-size:11pt;font-weight:700;…">14 October</span>
    …
    <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://example.com/wiki/billing-v2&amp;sa=D&amp;source=editors&amp;ust=…&amp;usg=…">
      <span style="…text-decoration:underline;…">rollout page</span>
    </a>
  </p>
  …
</b>

The Markdown it becomes:

# Q3 launch plan

We ship on **14 October**. The *only* blocker is the `billing-v2` flag, see the [rollout page](https://example.com/wiki/billing-v2).

## Checklist

- Freeze the release branch
  - Notify **#eng-release**
- Run the migration on staging

| Owner | Status |
| --- | --- |
| Priya | On track |

The status line for the sample reads: Google Docs redirect links were unwrapped to their real addresses. The table had no header row, so its first row became the header (Markdown tables need one).

Options explained

Paste from Google Docs is a formatted box, not a plain text field, which is what lets it receive the HTML flavour of a paste. You can also type or edit in it; the Markdown follows.
Bullet character chooses - or * for unordered lists. Both are valid Markdown; some style guides insist on one.
Load sample inserts the Docs clipboard HTML shown above; Clear empties both sides.
Copy Markdown and Download .md take the right-hand box as it is. Ctrl+Enter in the paste box copies.
The status line lists every approximation: unwrapped redirect links, a first row promoted to table header, underline kept as plain text, Word list paragraphs converted by their glyph, an image with no address dropped.

Edge cases and common errors

The Docs wrapper is not bold. Every Docs copy is wrapped in . A tag-only converter bolds the whole document; here the style wins and plain gives plain.
One bold phrase in several spans: Hello + world + ! as three spans, the first two bold, merges into **Hello world**!, not **Hello** **world**!.
Redirect links are unwrapped. https://www.google.com/url?q=https://example.com/a%3Fx%3D1&sa=D… becomes [link](https://example.com/a?x=1), with the address percent-decoded.
Nested lists the Docs way. A <ul> placed beside an <li> with aria-level="2" becomes - Parent ⏎ - Child.
Monospace is code. A span in Courier New (or Consolas, Menlo, Monaco, any font family containing “mono”) becomes `git status`. A whole paragraph in a monospace font becomes a fenced code block.
Underline has no Markdown. underlined and a line-through span give underlined and ~~struck~~; the status line says “Underline has no Markdown equivalent; underlined text is kept as plain text.”.
Title and Subtitle styles are not headings. Docs copies them as large text, so Document title comes out as a paragraph. Heading 1–6 styles do become # headings.
Markdown-significant characters are escaped so the text reads as it did: Version 2 * 3, a_b, and #hashtag becomes Version 2 \* 3, a_b, and #hashtag; the asterisk is escaped, the underscore inside a word is left alone, and the hash mid-line needs nothing.
Empty paragraphs collapse. Docs emits a  with an empty span for every blank line; one, two blank paragraphs, two become one⏎⏎two, one blank line.
Checklists copied from Docs arrive as ☐ and ☑ characters and become - [x] done ⏎ - [ ] todo.
Word pastes mark list items as paragraphs with a bullet glyph and an indent (MsoListParagraph); they are converted by that glyph and indent and flagged in the status line, since Word does not say where a list starts or ends.
A paste with no formatting (from a plain text field, a terminal, or Ctrl+Shift+V) produces the words unchanged and a status line saying why.
Size: a 300 KB paste (a long document) converts in well under a second. Comments, suggestions and footnotes are not copied by Docs, so they cannot appear here.

Do the same thing in code

In Google Docs itself

Tools → Preferences → tick "Enable Markdown"
Select text → right-click → Copy as Markdown
File → Download → Markdown (.md)         # the whole document

Shell (pandoc, from a downloaded .docx)

pandoc -f docx -t gfm --wrap=none document.docx -o document.md

JavaScript (browser)

// Read the HTML flavour of a paste, then convert it (turndown is the usual library).
box.addEventListener("paste", (e) => {
  const html = e.clipboardData.getData("text/html");
  const markdown = new TurndownService({ headingStyle: "atx" }).turndown(html);
});

None of those read Docs' inline styles: pandoc works from the .docx, not the clipboard, and turndown sees the font-weight:700 span as plain text unless you add a rule for it. For raw HTML source rather than a paste, use HTML to Markdown, which runs the same converter on text you type.

Runs entirely in your browser: this page is a static file with no server behind it, so nothing you paste can be uploaded. Last reviewed 18 September 2026 by Parthesh Gupta. Implements GitHub Flavored Markdown.