Guide
From Markdown notes to a document you can hand in
Markdown is a pleasant way to write: headings with a #, lists with a dash, no formatting toolbar to fight. The problem comes at the end, when a teacher, client or colleague wants a PDF. This tool turns Markdown into a clean, paginated document with real text, optional page numbers and a contents page, without installing Pandoc or a LaTeX distribution.
Getting your text in
Type or paste Markdown into the editor on the left, or open a .md file. The preview on the right updates as you type, so you can fix formatting before creating the PDF. The editor starts with a short example document that shows the supported features.
What is supported
The converter understands GitHub-flavoured Markdown:
- headings from
#to####, bold and italic text, - bulleted, numbered and nested lists, and task lists (
- [x] done, printed as[x]), - tables with a header row,
- block quotes,
- inline code and fenced code blocks,
- links, which stay clickable in the PDF.
Raw HTML in your Markdown is cleaned: scripts, forms, stylesheets and embedded media are removed before anything is converted.
Layout options
- Page size and orientation: A4 or Letter, portrait or landscape. Landscape helps with wide tables.
- Text size: 11 pt is a comfortable default; 12 pt suits assignments with formatting rules, 10 pt fits more on a page.
- Margins: normal (2 cm) for most documents, wide (2.8 cm) for printed reading copies with room for notes.
- Page numbers: shown as “3 / 12” centred at the bottom.
- Contents page: a first page listing every heading from level 1 to 3 with its page number.
Images
The converter never downloads anything, so images that point to a web address () or a file next to your Markdown () are left out, and a warning says how many. PNG and JPEG images embedded as data URLs are included. For documents with many pictures, convert the text here and add images with Edit PDF, or write the document in a word processor and use Word to PDF.
Code blocks
Code keeps its line breaks and indentation and gets a light grey background, but uses the document font rather than a monospace font. For listings where column alignment matters, such as configuration files or logs, Text to PDF with the monospace option keeps every character aligned.
Why not print the preview?
Printing a Markdown preview from a browser works, but page breaks land in the middle of tables, there are no page numbers or contents, and headers and footers from the browser appear on every page. Here the document is laid out as a document, with page numbers, an optional contents page, no browser headers or footers, and a proper title in the PDF’s properties.
A worked example: a project report
- Paste the report written in a notes app such as Obsidian or Joplin.
- Check the preview; the warning says one linked image will be left out.
- Choose A4, 11 pt, normal margins, page numbers and a contents page.
- Create the PDF and check the first pages in the preview below the button.
To keep editing Markdown with a live preview, use the Markdown Editor. To go the other way, from a PDF to Markdown, see PDF to Markdown.
Checked against the current version of the Markdown to PDF on .