📖 About

Working with documents in VS Code or Cursor often means switching between multiple formats — Word specs, PowerPoint decks, Excel spreadsheets, scanned PDFs, HTML pages, and more. But your editor speaks Markdown.

This extension bridges that gap. It converts any document to Markdown using anydoc (a Rust-based extraction engine) and turndown (for HTML files), and exports Markdown back to Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF, EPUB, HTML, RTF, and ODT — all without leaving your editor.

🎯 Key Highlights

• 🔄 Bidirectional — Import any format to Markdown, and export Markdown to 8+ formats
• 📄 20+ input formats — doc, docx, pptx, xlsx, odt, ods, odp, rtf, epub, csv, pdf, html, and more
• 📊 8 export targets — PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, EPUB, HTML, RTF, ODT
• 🦀 Rust-powered extraction — Fast, accurate conversion via anydoc (native NAPI-RS addon)
• 🌐 HTML → Markdown — Clean conversion with body extraction via turndown
• 📝 pandoc-wasm — EPUB, RTF, and ODT exports via pandoc running in WebAssembly (optional)
• 🖨️ PDF with Mermaid — Diagrams rendered as real SVG graphics via Chrome
• 🔒 Privacy-first — Everything runs locally, no data leaves your machine
• 🖥️ No bundled browser — Uses your installed Chrome/Chromium for PDF

✨ Features

Supported Input Formats

📦 Installation

Open VS Code / Cursor, launch Quick Open (Ctrl+P / Cmd+P), and run:

ext install jcendal.any-markdown-converter

Or search for Any Markdown Converter in the Extensions sidebar.

🚀 Usage

Export Markdown to another format

Right-click any .md file in the Explorer sidebar or within the editor, then select Export Markdown to...

A quick pick menu will appear with all available export formats:

From a Cursor Plan

When working with a plan generated by Cursor (.plan.md), click the ⋯ menu in the top-right corner of the editor and select Export Markdown to...

Convert a document to Markdown

Right-click any supported file in the Explorer sidebar or within the editor, then select Convert to Markdown.

You can also use the Command Palette (Cmd+Shift+P / Ctrl+Shift+P) and search for Convert to Markdown.

Preview as Markdown

Use the Command Palette to run Preview as Markdown to see a preview of any supported document without creating a file.

Other access methods

• Command Palette — Cmd+Shift+P / Ctrl+Shift+P → search for Any Markdown Converter
• Editor title bar — top-right area when a supported file is active

The output file is saved alongside the source file and opens automatically.

⚙️ Settings

Configure via File → Preferences → Settings and search for markdownConverter.

Configuration examples

Landscape A3 for large documents:

{
  "markdownConverter.pdf.pageSize": "A3",
  "markdownConverter.pdf.orientation": "landscape"
}

Extra time for complex Mermaid diagrams:

{
  "markdownConverter.pdf.mermaidWaitMs": 10000
}

Minimal PDF without page numbers:

{
  "markdownConverter.pdf.showPageNumbers": false,
  "markdownConverter.openAfterExport": false
}

🔧 Requirements

For PDF export, a Chromium-based browser must be installed:

The browser is auto-detected. If detection fails:

{
  "markdownConverter.chromePath": "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome"
}

For EPUB, RTF, and ODT export, the pandoc-wasm package is required. It is declared as an optional dependency — if it is not available, these three export formats will be disabled and the extension will notify you. All other conversions work without it.

All other conversions work out of the box with no additional dependencies.

🏗️ How It Works

              ┌── Import engines ───────────────────────────────────────────┐
              │                                                             │
              │  ┌───────────────┐                                          │
┌───────────┐ │  │ anydoc        │                              ┌────────┐  │
│ doc/docx  │─┤  │ (Rust native) │──────────────────────────────│  .md   │  │
│ pptx/xlsx │ │  └───────────────┘                              │        │  │
│ pdf/epub  │ │                                                 └────────┘  │
│ odt/csv   │ │  ┌───────────────┐                              ┌────────┐  │
│           │ │  │ turndown      │                              │  .md   │  │
│ html/htm  │─┤  │ (HTML → MD)   │──────────────────────────────│        │  │
└───────────┘ │  └───────────────┘                              └────────┘  │
              │                                                             │
              └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

              ┌── Export engines ────────────────────────────────────────────┐
              │                                                             │
┌───────────┐ │  md-to-docx ──────────────────────────────────▶  .docx     │
│           │ │  pptxgenjs ───────────────────────────────────▶  .pptx     │
│   .md     │─┤  exceljs ────────────────────────────────────▶  .xlsx     │
│           │ │  puppeteer-core + Chrome + Mermaid.js ────────▶  .pdf     │
│           │ │  marked ─────────────────────────────────────▶  .html     │
└───────────┘ │  pandoc-wasm (optional) ─────────────────────▶  .epub     │
              │  pandoc-wasm (optional) ─────────────────────▶  .rtf      │
              │  pandoc-wasm (optional) ─────────────────────▶  .odt      │
              │                                                             │
              └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Import (Any → Markdown)

Export (Markdown → ...)

🔒 Privacy

This extension runs entirely on your local machine:

• ✅ No telemetry or analytics
• ✅ No data collection or transmission
• ✅ Document content never leaves your computer
• ✅ The only network request is loading Mermaid.js from cdn.jsdelivr.net (PDF export)

🐛 Known Issues

🤝 Contributing

Contributions, issues, and feature requests are welcome!

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'feat: add amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

🙏 Acknowledgements

This extension is built on top of these excellent open-source projects:

📜 License

MIT © Jorge Cendal