# Parse documents into clean Markdown

> Parse PDFs, Office files, images, and web pages into clean, AI-ready Markdown — headings, tables, lists, and reading order preserved; preview before you copy, download, or save.

## Structure that survives conversion

- Headings and hierarchy — the document reads as an outline, not one undifferentiated block.
- Tables and lists — rows, columns, and bullets preserved as Markdown, not flattened prose.
- Reading order — multi-column pages, headers, and footnotes resolved into reading order.
- Preview and source mode — review the rendered Markdown, then switch to source for a pipeline.

## Your formats, covered

PDF, Office (Word/PowerPoint/Excel), images and scans, and web pages by URL. For a specific format, the per-format converters cover PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, images, HTML, and URLs.

## How parsing works

- Upload a file or paste a URL.
- A server-side pipeline parses structure the same way every time.
- Preview, copy, download, or save to your library. Long documents process asynchronously.

## Parsed Markdown vs copy-paste

Copy-paste from a PDF interleaves columns, flattens tables, and drops headings; ad-hoc extraction leaves page numbers and broken hyphenation. A parsing pipeline reconstructs reading order and structure so the Markdown is consistent across thousands of documents instead of failing on the messy ones.

## FAQ

### What makes the output AI-ready?

Parsing preserves headings, lists, tables, and reading order where possible, so the Markdown is predictable enough to chunk, embed, and retrieve without manual cleanup.

### Which file types can I parse?

Common document formats including PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, images and scans, and web content. The free public converter accepts files up to 10 MB.

### Do you support scanned documents?

Image-based and scanned files go through the same parsing pipeline. Higher-accuracy OCR is on the roadmap as an enhancement layer.

### How is Parse different from Batch and the API?

Parse is the single-document experience in the browser. Batch runs many files at once, and the API runs the same conversion from your own code. They all share one parsing engine.

### Is this a document editor or a PDF layout tool?

Neither. markitdown.ai converts documents into clean Markdown for AI and text workflows; it is not a visual PDF or layout editor.