Turn Any File Into Clean Text for Claude With MarkItDown
MarkItDown is Microsoft's free open-source tool that turns PDFs, Word, Excel and PowerPoint files into plain Markdown text. How to install it, the one command, what it reads, the catch, and a prompt to use it
A PDF carries layout Claude does not need. MarkItDown, a Microsoft repo past 190,000 GitHub stars, converts files and office documents into clean Markdown text built for AI tools, so you hand Claude the text instead of the file.
Here's what it reads, how to install it, the one command, the catch, and a prompt to use it.
What it reads
- PDF, PowerPoint, Word and Excel files.
- Images (EXIF details and OCR), audio, HTML, CSV, JSON and XML, ZIP files, EPubs and YouTube URLs.
- The output is Markdown: headings, lists and tables kept as plain text.
Free, for your email
Get the full setup steps + the copy-paste setup prompt
The rest of this guide (3 more sections, 1 copy-paste prompt) opens right here. The setup prompt, one paste into Claude that sets it all up, comes by email only. Use your real address.
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