I’m using and supporting Obsidian for a long time and I really love it…but…
I’m missing a reliable export function that is "built-in / part of the core plugins). I’ don’t want to depend on pandoc (which really does not work for me on Windows) and 3rd. Party developer. Why should I invest my time for this core feature? Can I not expect something as part of the software.
I’m surprised that the developer keep so much effort into this program, but really nothing in direction to export. I believe that export is an essential function when I want to share my work, but it’s nearly impossible to do this in a professional way in Obsidian.
I just learned that even Notion is not able to offer export to word, really hard to believe. Their answer is “convert the PDF”. this is really stupid and not professional!
So is this a PKM common problem?
Anyway,
my question is: Is there any easy working export solution beyond pandoc and related plugins?
If not - is there something I can expect on the roadmap?
Believe it or not, copying and pasting from Reading View works surprisingly well in simple cases. When you copy Reading View, you’re copying the rich text. So you can paste it into anything that accepts rich text and it’ll keep much of the formatting.
There are some specific third-party utilities built for e.g., Word to help with this kind of thing, too.
I have not tried it, but Writage for Word on Windows looks pretty polished.
On the Mac, Marked 2 is a celebrated solution for translating markdown to basically anything else:
Might I ask why you want to export? What is your use case for the export?
To me I find the markdown format a whole lot safer and more reliable a format compared to most other. I still have many documents in other proprietary formats, which are now rendered obsolete and unavailable due to the software being outdated.
On the other hand all of my markdown files are still readable, and readily available. Some minor adjustments have been made when switch between software, but all of the important(?) content is still just as accessible as when I wrote it (whether I wrote it yesterday or a few decades ago). The same can’t be said about various other document formats.
Sure,
for me it’s pretty easy and important:
I need so share my documents/notes with others. They have to look professional, and it’s a matter of format… in most cases I need PDF, but perfectly formatted (as this is my output to others).
So i.e. I need a word export with all images from that note, do a quick check/optimization and then create the PDF.
Sharing MD is not an option for me, and I believe in the less geeky business world you can not reach too many people.
Don’t get me wrong - I love the product, and I’m with you re to MD etc…
I’m not talking about exporting everything, but the more I integrate Obsidian in my professional life, the more I require this export.
My view: You can not create an app with focus on input only!
Information has to be and will be shared and the way to share written info (even with images explaining the context) is to export the data in formats that are known and used by many people.
in the meantime I was able to get Pandoc running on my Win machine as well. But it’s really a pain. Installing - path - sync setting of obsidian etc. way too mayn factors that create problems.
This is not the way to reach a professional audience with this software. (But you are selling a Pro License!)
Most of the people I know would not spend so much time as I did in the past just to get an export.
I’m happy to support the team with my ideas for the export. Ping when you need my input.
So this pandoc thing worked fine for 4 weeks, but now I’m looking again at an error message when I want a simple export to word (which is needed in my use case).
I really don’t want to waste my time with this kind of cryptic error messages, they always show up when you really don’t need them.
It’s corrupting my workflow.
In this case the user is depending on the plugin developer AND the provider for pandoc. Which makes it really complicate and time consuming to find a solution.
What kind of export do I expect from a tool that sells “professional licenses”?
I would expect a professional export like this:
Export to:
word (with custom style sheets)
PDF (with more settings then right now)
Open Office ODT
HTML (as single page)
RTF
Epub
AND
I would expect I can export a folder with structured and linked files in a way that they work as a local html files.
