Working with markdown (.md) files

LibreOffice Writer can open and save files in markdown (.md) file format, as well as paste markdown contents in a text document.

Markdown is a lightweight markup language that allows you to format text using simple syntax. It is widely used for writing documentation, README files, forum posts, and even some emails.

Opening a markdown file

1. Choose File - Open.

2. Locate the markdown file that you want to open.

   If the file has a *.md extension, select the file.

   If the markdown file has another extension, select the file, and then select "Markdown Document (.md, .markdown)" in the File type box

3. Click Open.

To save a file in Markdown format

1. Open the text document that you want to save as a Markdown file.

2. Choose File - Save as.

3. In the File name box, enter a name for the file.

4. In the File type box, select "Markdown Document (.md)".

5. Click Save.

Pasting markdown contents in a LibreOffice text document.

You can paste Markdown content directly into a LibreOffice Writer document. Writer intelligently applies the corresponding styles, automatically assigning paragraph, list, and character formatting, using the automatic (default) styles.

Opening a markdown file using the command line

You can open a Markdown file from the command line and automatically apply a template to generate a custom-formatted text document. Enter the following command in your operating system’s command shell to apply the template file template.ott to the file test.md:

soffice --infilter='Markdown:{"TemplateURL":{"type":"string","value":"./template.ott"}}' test.md