PDF to Markdown

I’m certain that most in this forum are already aware of this but in the off chance that some don’t, I’m sharing it.

Being a recent MD convert, I wanted to get a PDF of a Fortune article on Bill Gate’s Think Week into MD so I could quote from it more easily. I did a search for PDF to MD conversion and found a lot of online conversion tools. But, the better option for those who have DEVONthink is to use DT to convert from PDF to MD. This is a fantastic feature. Once converted, I sent the MD version to my research folder in Craft. The result looks like this in Craft:

Again, for many of you this is old news but new to me because I’d never considered converting a PDF to MD in the past so I had never looked for a tool to do so.

Perhaps this information will be helpful to someone.

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Thanks for this!
I’m looking for a better route from PDF or LaTeX to docx for my advisor’s review copies. This might help, maybe PDF to MD to docx.

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PDF Expert will export annotations to Markdown, if that is what you are looking for. There is also Highlights, which can export to specific applications…

Highlights can also export excerpts to markdown.

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Will Highlights export the entire PDF to MD?

Given your level of tech expertise, if I shared anything that was helpful to you I’m mighty pleased! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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It would be way easier to convert the HTML version of the article to markdown :upside_down_face: If you have access to that, I use Turndown Demo and it works great! (I linked the web version, but the JS library works great too!) I’ve actually got a Alfred workflow for this.

There is an safari / chrome extension called Markdownload- a small payment on safari but free in chrome. Will convert a web page into markdown

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That’s cool; I’m going to add that to Safari, thanks for the tip!

Oh, hello! Where has this been all my life? Much better than copying the whole page and sending it to Bear, and then getting the Markdown out of Bear.

Not only that, but if you have just some text selected it will just convert that which is usually what I want.

Thanks!

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There are several plugins and services to convert sites to markdown. I’ve found that my favorite, however, unexpectedly, is the Safari extension that comes with the Quiver note taking app. I don’t use Quiver much anymore, but the Safari extension is fast and accurate. I just convert, then select all, copy and paste into the destination app.

Can one get the Safari extension without buying the app?

Quiver is free on the Mac App Store, I believe. Sorry, I’ve used it for years so I don’t know.

Looks to be free on iOS but $10 for Mac.

That being said, it looks like something I might actually be able to use, so I might just buy it :slight_smile:

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Looks like there is “free trial” button on the website?

Yup, there’s a free demo version.

I went to buy the app…only to realize that I own it.

Since 2015.

:man_facepalming:

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Which version of DevonThink? The basic? Or something more expensive?

I have DT 3 Pro. I don’t know if other versions have the same feature.

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What is this sorcery?!?!?!?! :smiley:

MarkDownload is very cool. Thanks for pointing it out. :apple: