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Does Paper still support export as Markdown?

I'm trying to use the Dropbox API to access Paper documents as markdown. I have a connected app and a user with the new version of Paper (paper_as_files: enabled). I've switched from docs/download to /files/export as per the migration guide, but it doesn't appear that endpoint offers any method to select the export format.

So, is Markdown export still a thing, and if so, how do I do it?

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Accepted answers

Greg-DB

No, unfortunately /2/files/export doesn't support exporting as Markdown, nor is there another way do that in a 'paper_as_files' account, but I'll pass this along as a feature request. I can't promise if or when that might be implemented though.

Update: the /2/files/export endpoint now supports exporting .paper files as Markdown.

All comments

Greg-DB

Update: the /2/files/export endpoint now supports exporting .paper files as Markdown.

companion

Okay, thanks. That would have been really useful - I've looked at the HTML export, but it looks like there's a lot 'baked in' there: styles, UI stuff, etc. If markdown isn't a possibility, perhaps a simplified 'semantic tags' only HTML version might be do-able?

Just a heads-up: there are still a number of Dropbox-hosted blog posts and guides out there that talk about markdown export, with no mention of deprecation. Might be good to add some notes to prevent confusion.

Greg-DB

Thanks for the feedback! I'll send this along as well.

bram_l

I'm suprised this feature has dissapeared without any mentioning of it in the Paper Migration Guide. For us the Markdown export is an essential feature that would prevent us from using the 'paper_as_files' account in our current API integration.

Markdown is supported by wide a range of tools and libraries, thanks to its simplicity and well defined syntax. Therefor it seems much more appropriate as an export format for the API compared to HTML. Also converting Markdown to HTML (and applying styles) is very straight forward, the other way around not so much.

Hopefully this feature can be (re)implemented in the near future!

Greg-DB

@bram_l Thanks for the additional feedback! I'll pass this along as well.

htbsrvr

This is a deal breaker for our integration. Please add this feature!

Greg-DB

@htbsrvr Thanks for the note!

entotto

+1 - being able to export in a machine-readable format will be useful for automation: we could do all sorts of things like readability checks or validation of conformance to a required format.

It will also be useful to be able to import paper docs in Markdown from, say, a source repository that's managed and reviewed internally, and use them as templates, for example. (I know this is a different feature request, sorry for piggybacking here.)

euxn

Any Update?

Greg-DB

@entotto Thanks for the feedback! I'll pass this along to the team.

@euxn No, unfortunately I don't have an update on this.

companion

As this topic still gets at least sporadic activity, I thought it was worth mentioning that the Dropbox Paper help guides still say that you can export Paper docs to .docx or markdown format: https://help.dropbox.com/da-dk/files-folders/paper/export-docs

bram_l

@companion wrote:
As this topic still gets at least sporadic activity, I thought it was worth mentioning that the Dropbox Paper help guides still say that you can export Paper docs to .docx or markdown format: https://help.dropbox.com/da-dk/files-folders/paper/export-docs

Yes it's possible to export Dropbox Paper documents to Markdown using the web interface, but unfortunately it's still not in the new API.. The conversion itself works great, and it would be extremely helpful if this functionality could be implemented in the API.

Imearive

I think that you have missed something during magiration. You can check document and save name in lower case.

Greg-DB

Yes, to clarify, as linked above, exporting a Paper doc as Markdown from an account with the new Paper setup is possible manually via the web site. The original request here is for the ability to do so programmatically, via the API, which is not currently possible.

diventi

I'll add a +1 to this feature request. We need an option to export as markdown via the API! Thank you :-)

Greg-DB

@diventi Thanks for the note!

petergoes

At our company we use the current /paper/ endpoint to extract papers in markdown format.

I have been trying to migrate to the Dropbox API, but as mentioned, it only returns HTML. Since the exported HTML does not have semantics included (No <h1>...<h6>), lists items are all wrapped in <ul>'s seperatly, I can not transform the exported HTML back to markdown.

We would love to have the ability to export to markdown, to use Dropbox Paper as a CMS like we described in this blog post: Dropbox Paper as a headless CMS

Greg-DB

@petergoes Thanks for the feedback!

Daiki Noda

+1. Markdown-exporting helps us when backup documents.

diventi

Guys new endpoints are being released!
Check https://dropbox.tech/developers/new-paper-endpoints-released-in-preview for more info - I've yet to test it out but an initial version of markdown export functionality is now supported!

Greg-DB

That's correct, please give it a try and let us know if you run in to any issues or have any questions. Thanks!

companion

That’s great news, thanks very much! Excellent timing - I’ve got a good little project to test this out on.

Daiki Noda

Awesome! Thank you.

fax

Another vote for Markdown export. My main day-to-day file use is via plain text files using .md markup (actually, the multimarkdown flavor, but straight Gruber markdown is fine). Maybe just not a lot of us doing that, but we are an evangelist bunch, so wouldn't hurt if DB took another look at the pro/con.

Even without Export to Markdown, at a minimum, I'd expect that my .md files viewed with the Dropbox app would at least DISPLAY the text formatted according to markdown syntax. As is, none of my .md text files display as expected. One afternoon of coding could fix this.

Thanks