What does lecture slides to Markdown mean?
It means turning the text of a slide deck or handout into a note, keeping the structure of the lecture and leaving the page furniture behind.
Slides exported as a PDF put one idea on each page, with a title on top and bullets underneath. Handouts are often two columns of lines that stop at the margin. Copying from either gives you broken lines, stray bullet characters and the course code and page number again and again.
ocrtomarkdown joins the lines back into paragraphs, turns slide titles into headings, turns every kind of bullet into a proper list, keeps tables as tables and removes any line that repeats page after page. What is left is a note you can annotate and revise from.
From slides to study notes in five steps
- Export to PDFPowerPoint, Keynote and Google Slides can all save or export a PDF from the File menu. If your course already gives you a PDF handout, use that.
- Drop it aboveFree files can run to 10 pages. For a longer deck, split it into parts, or use Pro for up to 150 pages in one go.
- Pick your appObsidian is selected on this page. Notion, Evernote, OneNote, Apple Notes and Logseq are one click away.
- Read it against the slidesAnything that was a picture on the slide is left out, so look for gaps where a diagram or chart used to be.
- Add your own wordsCopy or download the note, then write what the lecturer said under each heading. That is the part that helps you remember.
What carries over from slides and handouts
| On the slide | In your note |
|---|---|
| Slide titles | Become headings in order, under one title for the lecture. |
| Bullets and sub-bullets | Every style of bullet becomes one proper list, nested the way the slide was. |
| Numbered questions | Stay a numbered list, so a “Check yourself” section is ready to answer. |
| Tables | Kept as Markdown tables. Check the cells against the slide. |
| Course name, footers and slide numbers | Removed when the same line repeats three or more times. |
| Equations | Text equations come through as text. One that could not be read is marked [equation not read]. |
| Speaker notes | Only if your PDF includes the notes pages. A normal slide export does not. |
| Diagrams, charts and photos | Left out. You keep the text around them. Add a screenshot yourself where you need one. |
Slides are prompts, not notes
A deck is what the lecturer needs to talk from, so it leaves out most of what you need to learn. The converted note gives you the skeleton in a form you can type into. A few things work well on top of it:
- Turn a heading into a question, then answer it from memory underneath.
- Add what the lecturer said that is not on the slide.
- Use the properties block in Obsidian, or a tag in your app, to file the note under the course.
Three ways to get slides into your notes
| Compared on | Retyping by hand | Generic OCR | ocrtomarkdown |
|---|---|---|---|
| Effort | Retype every slide | Copy out the text, then repair it | Drop the PDF, check, paste |
| Slide titles | Styled by hand | Plain lines of text | Real headings in order |
| Bullets | Retyped | Stray • and ◦ characters | One proper nested list |
| Tables | Rebuilt cell by cell | Rows of loose text | Markdown tables |
| Course name and slide numbers | Skipped | Repeated on every page | Removed |
| Your own comments | Typed in as you go | Mixed in with the repaired text | Added under clean headings |
Lecture slides to Markdown: your questions
Can I upload a PowerPoint or Keynote file directly?
Not directly. The converter takes PDF files. PowerPoint, Keynote and Google Slides can all save or export a PDF from the File menu, and that PDF is what you drop in.
What happens to the slide titles?
They become headings, in order, under one title for the lecture. Apps with a limit on heading depth get the deepest levels folded up to what they handle: three levels for Notion, Evernote and Apple Notes.
Do the footers and slide numbers disappear?
Yes, when the same line turns up three or more times, like a course name at the top of each page or “Page 2 of 14”. A line that appears once or twice is kept, because it might be content.
What about diagrams, charts and photos?
They are left out. You get the text and tables around them, so add a screenshot yourself where the picture matters.
Are speaker notes included?
Only if your PDF includes the notes pages. A normal slide export has slides only.
My handout has two columns. Will it read in order?
The converter reads columns in order where it can, and the tidy-up joins the lines of each paragraph. Check pages that have side boxes or pull quotes, where the order is hardest to get right.
Does it summarise the lecture?
No. It converts what is on the page and adds nothing. A summary would be your own words, and writing them is a big part of learning the material.
Can I convert a whole course at once?
One file at a time for now. Batches of up to 12 files are planned for Pro and are marked as coming soon.
Is it all right to convert slides my lecturer shared?
Convert only material you have the right to use, such as your own notes or course material you are allowed to copy for study. The terms ask you not to upload documents you have no right to.
What does it cost?
3 files a day, up to 10 pages each, are free with no account. Pro is $6 a month for 150 files a month, files up to 150 pages.