> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.pdf4llm.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Quickstart

> Go from zero to a working PDF-to-Markdown conversion in under five minutes.

<div id="apiIndicatorBadge">
  <div class="inner dotnet" />
</div>

# Quickstart

This page gets you from a blank terminal to a working PDF extraction in as few steps as possible. No prior knowledge of MuPDF.NET required.

***

## 1. Create a project

```bash theme={null}
dotnet new console -n Pdf4LlmDemo
cd Pdf4LlmDemo
```

***

## 2. Install PDF4LLM

```bash theme={null}
dotnet add package PDF4LLM
```

***

## 3. Add a PDF

Copy any PDF into the project folder and note its filename. If you don't have one to hand, download a sample:

```bash theme={null}
curl -o sample.pdf https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/wcag-2.1.pdf
```

***

## 4. Convert to Markdown

Replace the contents of `Program.cs` with:

```csharp theme={null}
using MuPDF.NET;
using PDF4LLM;

Document doc = new Document("sample.pdf");

string markdown = PdfExtractor.ToMarkdown(doc);

doc.Close();

Console.WriteLine(markdown);
```

Run it:

```bash theme={null}
dotnet run
```

You should see the PDF content printed to the console as Markdown — headings prefixed with `#`, tables as pipe syntax, bold and italic preserved.

***

## 5. Save the output

Write the result to a file instead of printing:

```csharp theme={null}
using MuPDF.NET;
using PDF4LLM;
using System.IO;

Document doc      = new Document("sample.pdf");
string   markdown = PdfExtractor.ToMarkdown(doc);
doc.Close();

File.WriteAllText("output.md", markdown, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8);
Console.WriteLine("Saved to output.md");
```

***

## 6. Try the other output formats

Switch the extraction method to see different representations of the same document.

**Plain text** — same layout analysis, no Markdown syntax:

```csharp theme={null}
string text = PdfExtractor.ToText(doc);
```

**JSON** — full layout structure with bounding boxes and block types:

```csharp theme={null}
string json = PdfExtractor.ToJson(doc);
File.WriteAllText("layout.json", json, System.Text.Encoding.UTF8);
```

***

## 7. Extract specific pages

Pass a zero-based list to process only the pages you need:

```csharp theme={null}
string markdown = PdfExtractor.ToMarkdown(
    doc,
    pages: new List<int> { 0, 1, 2 }
);
```

***

## You're up and running

That's the core loop: open a `Document`, call an extractor method, close the document. Everything else — OCR, image extraction, LlamaIndex loading, form fields — builds on this pattern.