Microsoft's MarkItDown converts documents to Markdown for LLM pipelines, but silently fails on scanned PDFs

Microsoft's open-source Python library MarkItDown converts files such as PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, HTML, and EPUBs into Markdown format using a single function call. The tool is designed specifically for LLM and text analysis pipelines, prioritizing machine-readable output over visually faithful reproduction. A developer tested the library across 14 file types using version 0.1.8 on Python 3.12, finding that text-based documents convert cleanly while tables may require minor cleanup. The most significant limitation discovered is that scanned PDFs — which lack a text layer — return nearly empty output with no error raised, making silent failure detection a manual step. The library is installable via pip and requires Python 3.10 or higher, though installing the full extras bundle may inadvertently pull a pre-release dependency that downgrades the package version.