> ## 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
> Convert a PDF to Markdown in a couple of lines of Python.
## Convert a PDF to Markdown
```python theme={null}
import pymupdf4llm
md_text = pymupdf4llm.to_markdown("my-document.pdf")
print(md_text)
```
That's it. PyMuPDF4LLM reads every page, extracts content in reading order, and returns a single Markdown string.
***
## Save the Output to a File
To write the result to a `.md` file, pass the output to Python's built-in `pathlib`:
```python theme={null}
import pymupdf4llm
from pathlib import Path
md_text = pymupdf4llm.to_markdown("my-document.pdf")
Path("output.md").write_text(md_text)
```
`write_text` automatically uses UTF-8 encoding when writing Markdown files, ensuring special characters and symbols are preserved correctly.
***
## Process Specific Pages
To extract only a subset of pages, pass a list of zero-based page numbers:
```python theme={null}
md_text = pymupdf4llm.to_markdown("my-document.pdf", pages=[0, 1, 2])
```
***
## Extract as Page Chunks
For RAG pipelines and LLM ingestion, `page_chunks=True` returns a list of dictionaries — one per page — with the text and metadata:
```python theme={null}
chunks = pymupdf4llm.to_markdown("my-document.pdf", page_chunks=True)
for chunk in chunks:
print(chunk["metadata"]["page"]) # page number
print(chunk["text"]) # Markdown content
```
Each chunk includes bounding box data, page dimensions, and document metadata. See [Chunk Schema](/python/reference/chunk-schema) for the full schema.
***
## What Happens Under the Hood
When you call `to_markdown()`, PyMuPDF4LLM:
1. Opens the document with PyMuPDF
2. Analyses the layout of each page — detecting columns, headings, tables, and images
3. Reconstructs reading order from the visual structure
4. Detects pages with no selectable text and triggers OCR automatically if installed
5. Returns the result as a Markdown string or list of chunk dictionaries
***
## Next Steps
See every supported input and output format.
Write .md, .json, and .txt files with pathlib.