How to Migrate from Microsoft Word and Google Docs to Obsidian

If you have years of notes stored in Microsoft Word or Google Docs, moving them to Obsidian can seem like a complicated and long-winded task. Fortunately, there is an easy way to convert an entire collection of Word or Google Docs files to Obsidian-ready Markdown in one batch, using a tool called Pandoc.

This guide covers the complete Word to Obsidian and Google Docs to Obsidian migration process, including what happens to your formatting and what to check before deleting your original files.

You can also take a look at this guide in video form:

MS Word vs Obsidian: Why convert to Markdown?

Microsoft Word and Obsidian are built around fundamentally different file formats. Microsoft Word’s .docx document stores your text with a large amount of extra information describing its formatting, styles and page structure. This makes Word very flexible when producing documents intended for printing, sharing, or publication. However, docx is a proprietary format from Microsoft. It isn’t trivial to move your files to other applications, read them without Word, and in general, manipulate them outside of Microsoft’s ecosystem.

Obsidian, by contrast, primarily works with Markdown (.md) files. Markdown is a formatting language that reads very similar to plain text. You can open markdown files with basically any text-editing app (not just Obsidian). Your notes are not dependent on a particular application or service (as is the case for Microsoft Word) and are thus completely future-proof. They remain ordinary text files stored locally on your computer, which can be opened and moved between many different applications. If you ever decide to move away from Obsidian, your entire vault can move with you.

To know more about Obsidian as a whole and how it can benefit academics, start here:

Can You Put Word Files Directly into Obsidian?

Yes. If you want to keep your documents as Word files, you can skip the migration process entirely and just expose your Word files in Obsidian. An Obsidian vault is just a folder on your computer, after all, and any file can be added to it.

To do this, simply copy the desired .docx files into your Obsidian vault, then go to:

Obsidian Settings (⌘, or Ctrl,) > Files & Links > Show all file types

And enable the setting. Obsidian will now display the Word files in its explorer. You can also link to one of these documents from a Markdown note. Mind that, however, Obsidian cannot natively open and display Word documents. Opening it from Obsidian will just launch Microsoft Word, and load the file there.

Depending on your use case, this can be enough. There is of course an important limitation: Obsidian cannot treat the contents of Word files like a normal note. If you want your old material to become part of your Obsidian knowledge base, converting the files to Markdown is the better approach.

How to Migrate Microsoft Word to Obsidian

For a large collection of Word files, the easiest approach is to use Pandoc, an open-source document converter capable of translating between formats. Instead of converting every document manually, you can place your Word files inside a folder and run one command that converts the entire folder to Markdown files.

For extra peace of mind, make a backup of your original documents before migrating. The Word documents are not removed during the process, but it is safest to perform the migration on a copy.

Step 1: Put your Word files in one folder

Start by collecting the .docx notes you want to migrate into a new, empty folder. We will refer to this as the “migration” folder from here on, though you can name it however you want.

Step 2: Install Pandoc

If you haven’t already, install Pandoc for your operating system. The easiest way is to just download and launch the official installer. After installation, open Terminal on macOS or Command Prompt on Windows and run:

pandoc -v

If Pandoc returns version information, the installation is working.

Keep the terminal open, as we will need it for the next steps (if you are confused about a step, refer to the video above).

Step 3: Navigate in the terminal to your migration folder

We need to move in the terminal to the migration folder from step 1. To navigate in the terminal, we use the command cd (for “change directory”) followed by the path to navigate to. Retrieving the path is easy:

• on MacOS, select the migration folder and press ⌘⌥C to copy the path (the video above shows a different method, both work just fine).
• on Windows, you can right-click the migration folder and select Copy as path, or just copy the path displayed at the top of the explorer.

That’s it. Now paste the path in the terminal after “cd”, it will look something like this:

cd "/Users/name/Desktop/migration"

After running the command (ie. pressing Enter), the terminal is operating inside that folder.

Step 4a: Convert Word to Markdown on macOS

On macOS, run this exact command:

for f in *.docx; do pandoc "$f" -s -t markdown -o "${f%.docx}.md"; done

Pandoc will go through every .docx file in the folder and create a corresponding Markdown file. You should now have two copies of each file: the original .docx and the new .md, living next to each other inside the folder.

Step 4b: Convert Word to Markdown on Windows

On Windows, run this exact command:

for %f in (*.docx) do pandoc "%f" -s -t markdown -o "%~nf.md"

Again, Pandoc will create one .md file for every .docx file in the folder.

Step 5: Move the Markdown Files into Obsidian

Once the conversion is complete, you can open some of the resulting .md files to check that the content looks correct. And you can delete the old .docx files from that folder by running this in the MacOS Terminal:

rm *.docx

or in Windows Command Prompt:

del *.docx

Finally, move the Markdown files—or the entire folder containing them—into your Obsidian vault. Your files are now fully migrated and treated as any other note by Obsidian.

How to Migrate Google Docs to Obsidian

If you have just a few files to migrate from Google Docs to Obsidian, you can consider doing it manually by opening each one in Google Docs, and going to:

File > Download > Markdown (.md)

If you have a large collection of notes, on the other hand, this naive approach will take forever. Google Docs does not provide a bulk export option to Markdown. It does, however, allow you to bulk export to .docx, making the migration workflow almost identical to the MS Word one.

Bulk export Google Docs to Obsidian Markdown

Select all the Google Docs files you want to move (it is easier to do so from Google Drive), then right click and select Download. This will download the files as .docx. Once the documents are downloaded, just proceed with the same workflow we covered for Microsoft Word above:

1. Put the .docx files into a temporary folder.
2. Run the appropriate Pandoc command for macOS or Windows in that folder.
3. Move the resulting .md files into your Obsidian vault.

How does formatting change from Word to Markdown?

A Word-to-Markdown conversion loses certain formatting features, complicated page layouts, comments and other elements not supported by Markdown syntax. That said, most Word documents usually translate well to Markdown. These features are all supported:

• headings
• paragraphs
• bold and italic text
• lists
• links
• quotations
• basic tables
• footnotes
• TeX mathematical expressions

Still, elaborate Word layouts could break, and require some cleanup after migration. Complex tables and text boxes, unusual styles and other Word-only features do not have direct Markdown equivalents. So for important documents, always test the conversion before processing your entire archive. And always keep a back-up of the original Word files.

Getting Started With Digital Notes in Obsidian

After switching from Microsoft Word to Obsidian’s Markdown format, you have unlocked an incredible treasure trove of possibilities. Since Obsidian files can be linked to one another, as well as to academic PDFs, papers, and the internet, you are now in possession of an information network rather than a collection of notes. The main advantage is that this network helps you spark ideas, become more productive at work, and automatically surface forgotten knowledge. If you want to learn how to do that, sign up for the free 21-day note-taking course and take a look at the video below.

Summary

If you only need access to your Word documents within Obsidian, you can store the original files directly inside your vault and toggle on the Detect all file extensions setting. Converting them to Markdown, however, is the way to turn them into actual notes that Obsidian can properly deal with.

To do this, you do not need to manually handle hundreds of Microsoft Word or Google Docs notes. For a Word to Obsidian migration, simply collect your .docx files in a folder and use Pandoc to batch-convert them to Markdown. For Google Docs to Obsidian, you can follow the same process, by first downloading your Google Docs as Word documents (which you can do in bulk).