Google Docs to Discourse Converter
Paste a draft from Google Docs and get clean Markdown that posts into a Discourse topic with the formatting intact.
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Copies the converted text the moment you paste or pick a destination, with no Copy click needed.Runs entirely in your browser. Your text never leaves your device.
How Google Docs maps to Discourse
| Feature | Google Docs | Discourse |
|---|---|---|
| Bold | <b> or <strong> | **x** |
| Italic | <i> or <em> | *x* |
| Link | <a href> | [text](url) |
| Heading | <h1> | # x |
| List | <ul> or <ol> | - item / 1. item |
Common gotchas
- Discourse topics are written in Markdown, so a Google Docs draft has to become Markdown first. That is what this outputs, with headings, bold, lists and links intact.
- Discourse also auto-converts HTML pasted into its composer, but it drags the document's stray styling along. Pasting the clean Markdown from here gives a tidier topic.
- Underline, font color and font size from the doc have no Markdown equivalent and are dropped. The text itself is kept.
- A Google Docs table becomes a GitHub-style pipe table, which Discourse renders as a real table.
Frequently asked
- How do I move a Google Docs draft into a Discourse topic?
- Paste the draft here with Discourse as the destination, copy the Markdown, and paste it into the Discourse composer. Bold, links, lists and headings all carry over.
- Does Discourse use Markdown?
- Yes. Discourse composes topics in CommonMark and GitHub-flavored Markdown, which is exactly what this produces, so the paste renders correctly.
- What happens to formatting Discourse cannot show?
- Underline, color and font size are dropped since Markdown has no equivalent, while bold, italic, links, lists, headings, code and tables all convert.