In short
The Word export is a genuine .docx: an Office Open XML package with Heading 1–4 paragraph styles, numbering definitions that restart for each list, real table structures and clickable hyperlinks. That means the navigation pane, table of contents and outline view all work when someone opens it, and Google Docs imports it without breaking the formatting.
| File produced | Real .docx (Office Open XML), not HTML renamed |
|---|---|
| Headings | Word Heading 1–4 styles, so navigation pane and table of contents work |
| Lists | Bulleted and numbered, nested to four levels; each ordered list restarts at 1 |
| Tables | Real Word tables with shaded header row and per-column alignment |
| Body font | Calibri 11 pt — Word's own default |
| Also handles | Task lists, blockquotes, inline code, fenced code blocks, hyperlinks, footnotes |
| Opens cleanly in | Microsoft Word, Google Docs, LibreOffice, WPS, Pages |
What you get in the .docx
The Word file is built element by element from your Markdown, using Word's own building blocks. That matters when someone opens it to edit:
- Heading 1–4 styles. The navigation pane, table of contents and "Outline" view all work, because headings are real heading styles rather than bold paragraphs.
- Numbered lists that restart. Each ordered list in your Markdown gets its own numbering, so the second list starts at 1 again — the most common failure in other converters.
- Nested bullets up to four levels deep, and task lists rendered with checkbox symbols.
- Real tables with a shaded header row and borders, sized to the page width.
- Clickable hyperlinks, inline code in Consolas, and fenced code blocks as shaded monospace paragraphs.
- Blockquotes as indented, italic paragraphs with a left rule.
Body text is set in Calibri at 11 pt, which is Word's own default, so the document matches what colleagues expect and inherits their template styles if they paste it elsewhere.
Opening the file in Google Docs
Upload the .docx to Google Drive and open it, or use File → Open in Google Docs. Because the file uses standard styles, headings, lists and tables survive the import. If you would rather skip the file entirely, use Copy for Google Docs: it copies the formatted document to your clipboard so you can paste directly into an open Doc, Word Online, Outlook or Notion.
Why not just paste Markdown into Word?
Word treats **bold** and ## Heading as literal characters, and lists become plain lines. You end up manually applying styles for ten minutes. Converting first gives you a document that already has structure, so any further editing is real editing rather than clean-up.
Limitations
Images are referenced by URL in Markdown, but Word requires images to be embedded; this converter inserts a placeholder with the image's alt text instead. Footnotes, LaTeX math and Mermaid diagrams are not converted. For those, Pandoc (pandoc file.md -o file.docx) remains the most complete option.