PDF Guides
Convert a PDF to Markdown for Obsidian or Notion
If you keep notes in Obsidian or Notion, a source PDF — an article, a report, a set of lecture notes — usually needs to become plain text or Markdown before it's actually useful inside your vault. Community plugins exist for this in Obsidian, but you don't need to install one just to pull the text out.
Why Markdown instead of just copy-pasting
Copying text directly out of a PDF viewer often brings along odd line breaks, inconsistent spacing, and no heading structure. Converting the whole document to Markdown first gives you a plain-text file with consistent formatting that both Obsidian and Notion parse cleanly when you paste it in or import it.
Converting a PDF to Markdown
Upload the PDF to a PDF-to-Markdown converter, and it extracts the readable text and downloads it as a .md file. Works well on text-based PDFs — reports, articles, and exported documents. Scanned, image-only PDFs need OCR first since there's no underlying text to extract.
- Upload your PDF to the converter
- Download the resulting .md file
- Open it in Obsidian as a new note, or paste the contents into a Notion page
- Clean up headings or formatting as needed once it's in your notes app
What to expect from the conversion
This pulls the text content out reliably, but it won't perfectly recreate complex layouts like multi-column PDFs, tables, or heavily designed documents — those may need some manual cleanup once they're in your notes app. For straightforward text-based PDFs, the result is usually ready to use as-is.
Frequently asked questions
Does this work with scanned PDFs?
Only if the PDF has selectable text already. Scanned, image-only PDFs need to go through OCR first to create text that can be extracted.
Will tables and multi-column layouts convert cleanly?
Complex layouts may need manual cleanup after conversion. Straightforward, single-column text-based PDFs convert most reliably.
Do I need an Obsidian plugin to use the result?
No. The converted file is a plain .md file you can open directly as a new note or paste into any notes app that supports Markdown.
Is my file uploaded to a server?
No, conversion happens entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded or stored.