How to Easily Convert Word to Markdown with Pandoc

How can Markdown be Better Than Microsoft Word?

image from Canva

Word has many great features that make it perfect for writing long
documents. But unfortunately, the only way to export them is as .docx files.

That’s unhelpful if you want to upload your work to a blog like Medium or another site that accepts Markdown instead of Word files.

Luckily, command line tools make converting Word documents simple enough. Pandoc is one of those tools.

This article will explain how to use Pandoc with some helpful examples.

Install Pandoc

First, you’ll need to install Pandoc. The easiest way is with a package manager on your computer.

There are a couple of options, depending on your operating system.

macOS Users can use Homebrew to install Pandoc

brew install pandoc

Windows Users can use Chocolatey to install Pandoc.

choco install pandoc

Linux Users can use their package manager (apt, apt-get, yum) to install Pandoc.

Markdown Basics

Markdown is a simple way to store documents with easy-to-learn formatting that makes…