Doc Converter
Convert Markdown → Word (.docx), Markdown → PDF and images → PDF, right from VS Code.
No upload, no sign-up, no account — the conversion runs on your machine, in
the extension itself.
Not in VS Code, or converting on someone else's machine? The same
converters — plus HTML → PDF, currently web-only — run as a free
website: doc-converter-4vgm.onrender.com.
A VS Code version of HTML → PDF is in testing; see Roadmap.
Features
- Markdown to Word — headings, bold/italic/code, bullet and numbered
lists (nested too), tables, blockquotes and links all carry over. Open any
.md file and a Convert Markdown to Word (.docx) button appears in the
top-right of the editor — one click, done.
- Markdown to PDF — same idea, same places, a clean A4 PDF: headings,
lists (nested and task lists), tables, code blocks, quotes and links.
Built into the extension — no browser, nothing to install.
- Images to PDF — combine any number of PNG/JPEG files into one PDF,
one page per image, in the order you pick. Open a single image and a
Combine Images into PDF button appears in the top-right of the editor.
- Nothing is uploaded. No accounts, no API keys, no configuration required.
- Open source (MIT) — the code is public, issues and PRs are welcome.
How to use
Markdown → Word or PDF
Pick whichever is closest at hand — all three work the same way, for Word
and for PDF:
- Open a
.md file, then either:
- Easiest: click Convert Markdown to Word (.docx) or Convert
Markdown to PDF in the top-right of the editor, next to the tab bar
- Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P) →
Doc Converter: Convert Markdown to Word (.docx) (or … to PDF)
- right-click the file in the Explorer sidebar → Convert Markdown to
Word (.docx) or Convert Markdown to PDF
- A
.docx (or .pdf) with the same name appears next to the .md file. A toast
offers to reveal or open it.
No file open? Run the command anyway — it'll ask you to pick a .md file.
Images → PDF
- One image: open it in VS Code and click Combine Images into PDF in
the top-right of the editor. The PDF is saved next to it, named after the
image.
- Several images: in the Explorer, select them (Ctrl/Cmd-click
to multi-select) → right-click → Combine Images into PDF. They're
saved as
images.pdf in the same folder, ordered by filename.
- Nothing selected? Run Doc Converter: Combine Images into PDF from the
Command Palette instead — it opens a file picker.
That's the whole workflow. There's no setup step and nothing to configure
before your first conversion.
Why local matters
Markdown notes and images are often drafts, private notes, or client work —
not things you want passed through a third-party server just to change
format. This extension never makes a network request: everything is public
in the source,
so that claim is checkable rather than just stated.
Settings
| Setting |
Default |
What it does |
docConverter.openAfterConvert |
true |
Show a "Reveal / Open" prompt after each conversion. Turn off for silent conversions. |
Current limits
- Images inside Markdown aren't embedded in either format — the alt text
is kept instead. That's deliberate: fetching an image means a network
request, and this extension never makes one.
- Image → PDF reads PNG and JPEG. EXIF auto-rotation isn't applied yet.
- Very elaborate tables may render more simply than a full pandoc conversion.
- Markdown → PDF draws Latin, Greek and Cyrillic text plus arrows, symbols
and emoji (emoji are single-colour). Scripts it has no font for — Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew — show as □ and you get a warning saying
so. Markdown → Word keeps them all, so use that for such documents.
Roadmap
- HTML → PDF is live on the web version
and in testing for VS Code. Good local HTML→PDF needs real CSS/layout
rendering, which in practice means bundling a headless browser — a
meaningfully bigger, heavier dependency than
marked/pdf-lib, so it's
being evaluated rather than shipped outright, to keep the "no network,
no setup" promise this extension makes intact.
- Beyond that: DOCX ↔ PDF and others — same principle each time, a new
command, zero new setup.
Contributing
Issues and pull requests are welcome at
github.com/i-mus/doc-converter.
The extension lives in the extension/ folder; the Flask source for the
web version is at the repo root.
Development
npm install
npm run check # type-check
npm run smoke # headless conversion test -> smoke.docx / smoke.pdf
npm test # integration tests in a real VS Code instance
npm run build # bundle to dist/extension.js
npm run package # build + create the .vsix
Press F5 in VS Code to launch an Extension Development Host.
License
MIT
| |
