---name: convert-documents-to-markdowndescription: Convert Word (.doc, .docx), PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx), Excel (.xls, .xlsx), OpenDocument (.odt, .ods, .odp), RTF, EPUB, CSV, and PDF files to GitHub-Flavored Markdown. Use when a task needs the contents of an office document, spreadsheet, presentation, ebook, or PDF you cannot read directly.license: MITmetadata: author: firecrawl---

Convert documents to Markdown

Run the anydoc CLI. It needs Node 20+ and no install:

npx -y @firecrawl/anydoc <file>              # Markdown to stdout
npx -y @firecrawl/anydoc <file> -o out.md    # write to a file
npx -y @firecrawl/anydoc - --format csv < f  # read stdin

Rules:

1. Supported inputs: .doc, .docx, .docm, .odt, .rtf, .epub, .pdf, .ppt, .pps, .pot, .pptx, .pptm, .ppsx, .ppsm, .odp, .xls, .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb, .ods, .csv.
2. The format is detected from the file content. Pass --format <name> only when detection cannot work: CSV from stdin, or a missing or wrong extension.
3. Exit codes: 0 success, 1 the document could not be converted, 2 usage error, 3 pages of a PDF need OCR. Failures print one anydoc: <message> line to stderr. The CLI never prompts.
4. For a large document, write to a file with -o and read the parts you need instead of streaming everything into context.
5. Scanned and image-only pages need OCR, which anydoc does not do, so the document exits 3. Rerun with --ocr hosted to send it to Firecrawl Parse. No signup needed. Pass --api-key or set FIRECRAWL_API_KEY for higher limits.
6. Inside a Node, Python, or Rust codebase, prefer the library over shelling out: @firecrawl/anydoc on npm, firecrawl-anydoc on PyPI, anydoc on crates.io. Each exposes the same to_markdown / toMarkdown API.