Do I need to publish the document first?

Yes — File → Share → Publish to web. An ordinary sharing link isn't enough; a published link is the only form Google serves without requiring a sign-in.

Is heading detection always correct?

It's a heuristic against how Docs actually exports formatting, not a guarantee. A document that uses Heading styles consistently converts cleanly; one that fakes headings with irregular bold-and-large text in a few places may need a manual check afterward.

What happens to images and tables?

Tables convert to Markdown tables. Images are dropped — Markdown has no way to embed the actual file, only a URL, and a published Doc's image URLs are not stable enough to be worth linking to.

Free tool

Google Docs to Markdown converter

Paste a published Google Docs link and get Markdown back with headings intact, not flattened into bold text.

Converts a published Google Doc to Markdown. The specific problem it solves: Docs doesn't export real heading tags for most documents — a heading is a paragraph styled by inline font-size and weight, so a generic converter reads it as bold text and the outline disappears. This detects that pattern and promotes it back to real Markdown headings before converting.

How it works

1
Paste the doc's URL — a normal edit link is fine, it gets rewritten to the published form automatically if the document has been published.
2
We recover headings from their font size and weight before converting the rest.
3
You get Markdown back, with the document's actual structure preserved.

Questions about this tool

Do I need to publish the document first?: Yes — File → Share → Publish to web. An ordinary sharing link isn't enough; a published link is the only form Google serves without requiring a sign-in.
Is heading detection always correct?: It's a heuristic against how Docs actually exports formatting, not a guarantee. A document that uses Heading styles consistently converts cleanly; one that fakes headings with irregular bold-and-large text in a few places may need a manual check afterward.
What happens to images and tables?: Tables convert to Markdown tables. Images are dropped — Markdown has no way to embed the actual file, only a URL, and a published Doc's image URLs are not stable enough to be worth linking to.

How it works

Questions about this tool

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