Paste to Markdown: Convert Rich Text and Web Content to .md

Paste to markdown tools work because your clipboard carries two copies of what you copied: plain text and HTML. The tool reads the HTML flavour and converts it to Markdown, so headings, links, lists, and tables survive. This guide shows what's on the clipboard, which apps convert on copy or paste for free, and what each source becomes.

What's Actually on the Clipboard?

When you copy from a web page, Google Docs, Word, or an email, the browser or app writes several formats to the clipboard at once. Per MDN's DataTransfer documentation, each format is a MIME type such as text/plain or text/html, and a paste handler can ask for whichever it wants.

That explains three things people hit. A plain <textarea> asks for text/plain, so pasting rich text into a basic editor drops the formatting; nothing was lost, the editor just didn't ask for it. A PDF viewer or a terminal writes only text/plain, so there's no HTML for any rich text to markdown tool to convert. And some mobile browsers expose only the plain flavour on paste, which is why "paste to markdown mobile" searches end in disappointment.

One more wrinkle: when you copy from a native app rather than a browser, the HTML flavour is only there if the app wrote it. Word, Outlook, Apple Notes, and most mail clients do; many code editors and terminals don't.

The conversion itself is HTML to Markdown, the same job our HTML to Markdown guide covers. A paste tool just skips the step where you find the HTML yourself.

Copy as Markdown at the Source

Often you don't need a converter at all, because the app you're copying from can hand you Markdown directly. Check these before reaching for a tool.

Google Docs. Enable Markdown under Tools > Preferences, then select text, right-click, and choose Copy as Markdown. Google's Markdown help page also documents File > Download > Markdown (.md) for a whole document and Paste from Markdown for the reverse.

Notion. Use the page menu's Export option and pick Markdown; there's no copy as markdown command, but the export covers a page and its subpages.

Word. Word has no Markdown export. Save as .docx and convert it; our Word to Markdown tutorial compares the routes and shows what happens to tables and footnotes.

Web pages. Skip the clipboard entirely. Paste the address into the URL to Markdown tool and it fetches the page and converts the article body, which sidesteps every mobile paste limitation.

Paste as Markdown at the Destination

The other place conversion can happen is the app you paste into. Two editors do it without any extension or setting.

Obsidian converts pasted HTML to Markdown by default, so copying a web article and pressing Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac) gives you headings and links, not raw text. Ctrl+Shift+V pastes as plain text when you don't want that. Lists and links come through cleanly; complex tables are the usual weak spot of any HTML conversion.

VS Code needs the Paste as Markdown extension. Its listing says conversion runs automatically on the normal paste shortcut in .md files, with tables becoming GFM pipe tables and Word's mso-* styles and Google Docs redirect URLs cleaned up. Cmd+Shift+V still pastes plain text.

A limitation to know: our editor pastes plain text. It's a Markdown editor, so it takes what you paste as Markdown source. To convert rich content on this site, use the URL tool for web pages or the HTML tool for everything else, as the next section shows.

How Can I Convert Text to Markdown from Any Source?

For a source with no copy-as-Markdown feature and no converting destination, grab the HTML and run it through the HTML to Markdown tool. In Chrome, Edge, or Firefox, right-click the content, choose Inspect, right-click the highlighted element in the panel, and pick Copy > Copy outerHTML. Paste that into the tool's HTML box and click convert. The Markdown loads into the editor with a live preview.

Here is what the clipboard HTML from five common sources typically becomes after that converter, and the one cleanup each usually needs.

The spreadsheet row is the pleasant surprise. A block of cells copied from Excel or Google Sheets carries a <table> in its HTML. A text to markdown converter that reads HTML therefore produces a pipe table with no extra work. Our CSV to Markdown table guide covers the file-based route when the data lives on disk.

Try a Paste to Markdown Result in the Editor

The demo below holds the kind of Markdown a web article paste produces, so you can see the shape of a converted paste and edit it. On the HTML to Markdown tool page, paste your HTML into the HTML box and convert; the result loads into an editor like this one.

const x = 1;

We prefer this two-step route over a dedicated paste widget for anything longer than a paragraph, because the HTML box shows you exactly what the source handed over. When the output looks wrong, the cause is visible.

How Do I Paste Code and Images into Markdown?

Two of the most searched questions about pasting have short answers.

Code. Paste it, then wrap it in a fence: a line of three backticks before, a language name on that line, and three backticks after. Pasted code from an editor arrives as plain text, which is what you want; the only trap is smart quotes if the code passed through a word processor first. Our Markdown code block guide covers inline code and language tags.

Images. Markdown can't hold an image, only a link to one, so where a pasted image ends up depends on the destination. In a GitHub comment or issue, GitHub Docs says the file is uploaded immediately and the text field updates with a URL, with a 10MB limit for images. Obsidian saves the image into your vault and inserts a link.

A plain editor, including ours, has nowhere to put the file: save the image alongside the .md and reference it with ![alt](image.png). The Markdown image guide shows the path rules.

Common Paste to Markdown Mistakes

Pasting into a plain text box and blaming the tool. If the box only reads text/plain, the formatting was never requested. Use a destination that converts, or the HTML route above.

Trusting a Google Docs paste. The Docs clipboard wraps everything in a bold tag with normal weight and marks real bold with a style attribute, which naive converters misread. Copy as Markdown is built in; use it.

Forgetting relative links. A web article's /pricing link is relative to its own site. After conversion, prefix it with the domain or the link points at your site instead.

Paste to Markdown FAQ

The whole paste to markdown trick is knowing which flavour of your clipboard is being read. Copy as Markdown where the source offers it, paste into an app that converts where it doesn't, and fall back to copying the HTML for everything else. Then finish in the editor, where the live preview shows whether the headings, links, and tables came through.