Guide for using Microsoft MarkItDown - a Python utility for converting files to Markdown. Use when converting PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, images, audio, HTML, CSV, JSON, XML, ZIP, YouTube URLs, EPubs, Jupyter notebooks, RSS feeds, or Wikipedia pages to Markdown format. Also use for document proces

MarkItDown Skill Microsoft's Python utility for converting various file formats to Markdown for LLM and text analysis pipelines. Overview MarkItDown converts documents while preserving structure (headings, lists, tables, links). It's optimized for LLM consumption rather than human readable output. Supported Formats Category Formats Documents PDF, Word (DOCX), PowerPoint (PPTX), Excel (XLSX, XLS) Media Images (EXIF + OCR), Audio (WAV, MP3 transcription) Web HTML, YouTube URLs, Wikipedia, RSS/Atom feeds Data CSV, JSON, XML, Jupyter notebooks (.ipynb) Archives ZIP (iterates contents), EPub Email Outlook MSG files Quick Start Installation Optional Dependencies Extra Description [all] All optional dependencies [pdf] PDF file support [docx] Word documents [pptx] PowerPoint presentations [xlsx] Excel spreadsheets [xls] Legacy Excel files [outlook] Outlook MSG files [az doc intel] Azure Document Intelligence [audio transcription] WAV/MP3 transcription [youtube transcription] YouTube video transcripts Command Line Usage Python API Common Use Cases Batch Convert Directory Process for LLM Context Extract YouTube Transcript Image OCR with AI Description Convert Jupyter Notebook Extract Wikipedia Content Parse RSS Feed Plugin System MarkItDown supports third party plugins for extended functionality. Search GitHub for markitdown plugin to find available plugins. MCP Server Integration MarkItDown offers an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for integration with LLM applications like Claude Desktop. See [markitdown mcp][mcp repo] for configuration details. [mcp repo]: https://github.com/microsoft/markitdown/tree/main/packages/markitdown mcp Docker Usage Troubleshooting Issue Solution Missing dependencies Install with pip install 'markitdown[all]' PDF extraction fails Try Azure Document Intelligence for complex PDFs Image text not extracted Ensure OCR dependencies installed or use LLM mode Large file timeout Process in chunks or use streaming Plugin not found Run markitdown list plugins to verify installation Common Errors Requirements Python = 3.10 Virtual environment recommended References references/cli reference.md Complete CLI options references/api reference.md Python API details references/examples.md Extended examples references/advanced features.md Custom converters, URI handling GitHub: <https://github.com/microsoft/markitdown PyPI: <https://pypi.org/project/markitdown/ Gotchas DOCX with embedded images: images extract to separate files; markdown uses absolute paths — moving the markdown file alone breaks the image refs. PDF OCR confidence isn't surfaced — low confidence text is returned as if certain; downstream LLM use can be confidently wrong. XLSX merged cells extract as separate cells with empty values for non anchor positions — pivoted reports lose their column groupings invisibly. HTML to markdown loses CSS driven layout — column positioned tables collapse to row major linear output; complex tables become unparseable. The use llm flag for image descriptions silently falls back to filename if no OPENAI API KEY — outputs look populated but contain no real description.