MarkItDown: files to readable Markdown

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# MarkItDown — The Other Tab tested commands

Repository: https://github.com/microsoft/markitdown
License: MIT. Tested package: 0.1.9, Python 3.12, 26 October 2026.

## Reproduce a minimal local conversion
Use a virtual environment rather than changing your system Python.

```sh
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install 'markitdown[docx,xlsx]==0.1.9'
markitdown launch-brief.docx -o brief.md
markitdown sample-budget.xlsx -o budget.md
```

On Windows, activate with .venv\Scripts\activate instead. Only the Mac/Python conversion was tested here. The included fixtures are invented sample content, not anyone's financial records.

## Actual results
The Word heading became '# Weekend launch brief'. The spreadsheet became a Markdown table with Coffee 250, Taxi 480 and Total 730. No LLM API client was configured for this basic test. Other optional integrations can have their own processing and costs.

## Before using the result with ChatGPT or another AI tool
Inspect headings, rows, amounts and missing content first. Conversion is not a guarantee of better answers. The page layout is not preserved. Keep private documents private and review a service's data settings before uploading them. Formats requiring extra dependencies need those separately.

The supplied source files, actual Markdown results and the reproduction script are included below.