📖 About

Working with documents in VS Code or Cursor often means switching between multiple formats — Word specs, PowerPoint decks, Excel spreadsheets, scanned PDFs, 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 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, and more
• 📊 8 export targets — PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, EPUB, HTML, RTF, ODT
• 🦀 Rust-powered extraction — Fast, accurate conversion via anydoc (WASM)
• 📝 pandoc-wasm — EPUB, RTF, and ODT exports via pandoc running in WebAssembly
• 🖨️ 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

Convert a document to Markdown

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

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

Export Markdown to another format

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

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

Preview as Markdown

Use the Command Palette to run Any Markdown Converter: 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, pandoc-wasm is downloaded automatically on first use (one-time setup).

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

🏗️ How It Works

              ┌── anydoc (Rust/WASM) ──────────────────────────────────────────┐
              │                                                                │
┌───────────┐ │  ┌──────────────┐     ┌──────────────────────┐     ┌────────┐  │
│ doc/docx  │─┤  │  anydoc      │ ──▶ │  Markdown            │     │  .md   │  │
│ pptx/xlsx │ │  │  (Rust WASM) │     │                      │     │        │  │
│ pdf/epub  │ │  └──────────────┘     └──────────────────────┘     └────────┘  │
│ odt/csv   │ │                                                                │
└───────────┘ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

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

Import (Any → Markdown)

1. The file is processed by anydoc, a Rust-based document extraction engine compiled to WASM
2. Text, tables, images, and structure are extracted and converted to clean 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