Skip to content

How to convert a PDF to Markdown for ChatGPT, Notion or Obsidian

By the Fusion Office team · Updated

Quick answer

Open PDF to Markdown, choose the PDF, and press Convert to Markdown. You get the document's text with headings, lists and tables in Markdown, ready to copy into ChatGPT, Notion, Obsidian or a GitHub README. The conversion runs in your browser, so the document isn't uploaded.

Convert step by step

  1. 1Open PDF to Markdown and choose the PDF.
  2. 2Turn on page separators (---) if you want to see where each page ended.
  3. 3Press Convert to Markdown.
  4. 4Copy the text from the preview, or download the .md file.

Why Markdown

  • AI assistants understand structure better from Markdown than from plain copied text: headings and tables survive.
  • Notion, Obsidian, GitHub and most wikis paste Markdown as formatted content.
  • It's plain text, so it's small, searchable and easy to edit.

For plain text with no structure, Extract text is simpler.

Limits

  • Scanned PDFs need OCR PDF first.
  • Complex multi-column layouts are simplified into a single reading order.
  • Images aren't included; only the text and its structure.

To turn Markdown back into a printable document, use Markdown to PDF.

Frequently asked questions

Is it safe to convert confidential PDFs?

The conversion runs on your device, so the PDF isn't uploaded. What you then paste into an AI chat is up to you.

Does it keep tables?

Yes, tables come out as Markdown tables where the PDF's columns can be detected.