Pandoc
FreeThe universal translator between document formats
A document conversion tool that translates between dozens of input and output formats — Markdown, Word, HTML, LaTeX, EPUB, PDF, reStructuredText, Org-mode, Jupyter notebooks and more. It applies templates, generates tables of contents automatically, and handles bibliographies and citations. The Windows installer is about 39 MB.
Why we picked it
"Convert this Markdown to Word for my manager." "Turn these Word files into web pages." "Package these blog posts as an EPUB." "Typeset this Markdown paper into a LaTeX PDF." These tasks used to mean manual copy-paste reformatting, or a conversion website that wants your file uploaded.
Pandoc is the general solution. 45,864 stars, written by the scholar John MacFarlane and maintained for nearly two decades. It parses any input format into a single intermediate document structure and then writes any target format, so the supported combinations multiply out to an enormous matrix.
The most-used paths:
- Markdown → Word: write in Markdown because it is comfortable, deliver .docx because that is what was asked for. Supply a Word template file and the output conforms to a company or journal style automatically.
- Markdown → PDF: typeset through LaTeX underneath, producing quality far beyond browser printing. This path requires installing a LaTeX distribution (TeX Live or MiKTeX), which is not small.
- Word → Markdown: turn someone's .docx into plain text for version control or a static blog.
- A folder of Markdown → EPUB: package your own writing as an ebook.
- HTML → anything: convert archived web pages into editable documents.
Among the advanced capabilities, bibliography handling is the standout: with a BibTeX or CSL file it generates in-text citations and reference lists conforming to a specified style (APA, MLA and many others). For anyone writing papers, the time saved is substantial.
Be prepared for:
- It is a command-line tool. The basic form is
pandoc input.md -o output.docx— simple, but typed. If you would rather not, many editors (VS Code, Typora, Obsidian export plugins) call it internally, so you benefit indirectly. - Complex layouts do not round-trip perfectly. Finely styled Word documents, floating text-wrapped images and intricate tables may need manual touch-up. Simple documents convert essentially losslessly.
- PDF output needs LaTeX installed, which is where most people get stuck; the documentation also covers lighter alternative engines such as wkhtmltopdf and weasyprint.
It is the kind of tool you do not use daily and that saves an entire day when you do. Worth installing before you need it.