Documents

Connect

Press “connect” on the Documents card and choose the folder your documents are in; everything inside it, subfolders included, is read. The panel opens in ~/Documents and can make a new folder. Then press “select export folder” and pick a separate folder, like ~/Documents/converted.

The export folder cannot be the documents folder or a folder inside it, and the documents folder cannot sit inside the export folder: the app does not let you pick either.

Where the files go

Each output sits where its document sits in your folder, in the same folder shape: report.md, and report.html beside it when HTML is ticked. Two documents with the same name in one folder keep their extension in the file name: report-pdf.md, report-docx.md. A folder right in your home folder, like ~/Documents, gets a documents-export folder inside it; a deeper one is used as it is.

What is read

kind	files
Word and text	.doc, .docx, .docm, .odt, .rtf
Slides	.ppt, .pps, .pot, .pptx, .pptm, .ppsx, .ppsm, .odp
Spreadsheets	.xls, .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb, .ods, .csv
PDF and books	.pdf, .epub

Left out: Pages, Numbers and Keynote files (export them to Word, PowerPoint, Excel or PDF first), hidden files, files inside packages, and symlinks. The tabs filter the list: All, PDF, Word, Slides, Sheets, Books and Scans.

Scanned pages

A PDF page with no text is read by Apple’s text recognition on your Mac; nothing is uploaded. A page it cannot read becomes > page <n>: scanned page could not be read. Text recognition runs on PDFs only.

Markdown and HTML

Tick “Markdown”, “HTML” or both on the format row; at least one stays ticked. Documents is the only app that writes both in one sync. The HTML is plain, with no styling. The MCP server reads the Markdown only.

The file

key	holds
title	the file name without its extension
source	the document’s path inside your documents folder
format	the original extension
pages	the page count of a PDF
scanned	true when text recognition read the pages
modified	when the document last changed

---
title: "Quarterly report"
source: "Work/Quarterly report.pdf"
format: pdf
pages: 12
scanned: true
modified: 2026-08-30T17:02:11Z
---

# Quarterly report

Free and unlocked

Your 10 most recently modified documents among the ones you ticked convert free, and both formats of one document count once; the rest need the one-time unlock (pricing).

Sync and full resync

After the first “sync now”, Exporter watches the folder while it runs and converts what changed a few seconds after you save. A document whose Markdown is already newer than it is skipped without being opened, so a big folder stays fast. The convert button at the end of a row converts that one document now, ticked or not. A deleted document’s output leaves on the next sync.

“full resync” asks first, then removes only the files Exporter wrote in the export folder and converts your documents again.

Problems and fixes

• a red triangle on a row gives the reason the document failed, such as “this document is password protected” or “this document is damaged and is missing part of its contents”. Fix it in the app that made it, then press the convert button at the end of the row
• a lock on a row, “free limit reached · unlock documents to convert this one”: the document is past the free ten
• “that folder could not be opened”: the documents folder moved or its drive is not mounted. Press “connect” again
• a Pages, Numbers or Keynote file is missing: export it to Word, PowerPoint, Excel or PDF, and the result converts