MarkItDown

MarkItDown is an open-source Microsoft tool that converts many file types into tidy Markdown text with headings, lists and tables: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, HTML, CSV, JSON, XML, EPUB, ZIP archives and more, plus descriptions of images and audio files. Its main purpose is preparing documents for AI models and search, but it is also useful for pulling tables out of a specification or spreadsheet into text you can edit and compare. It works from the command line or inside a Python script. Limitation: there is no graphical interface, and the output is meant for reading and processing, not for faithfully reproducing the original layout.