Convert HTML to reStructuredText Online

Paste a HTML table below, edit it if you need to, and get reStructuredText back. The conversion runs in your browser, so nothing is uploaded, there is no size limit and there is no signup.

From

From a page

The only part of this site that uses a server. The address is sent to it so the page can be fetched, because a browser is not allowed to fetch someone else's page itself. Your own files are never involved.

Nothing here is uploaded. The parsing happens on this page.

Edit

Paste or upload something above and it will appear here.

ToDataMarkupDocumentsCodeSchemasImages

Header rowDetect numbers

The output will appear here once there is a table to convert.

What HTML is

An HTML table is a table element containing thead and tbody, with th cells for headers and td cells for data.

Web pages, email templates and anything pasted into a CMS.

What reStructuredText is

reStructuredText simple tables underline the header with equals signs and align columns with spaces.

Python documentation, Sphinx projects and anything on Read the Docs.

What changes when you convert HTML to reStructuredText

The first table in the markup is used. Cell contents are stripped of inline tags and entities are decoded, so <td><b>Total</b> </td> arrives as Total. Nested tables inside a cell are not descended into.

The equals-sign rule under the header is what tells Sphinx the first row is a header. Without it the table renders as data with no heading.

What carries over from HTML to reStructuredText

HTML records 2 things about a table that reStructuredText has no way to hold.

HTML can hold a value that is itself a list or an object. reStructuredText has only flat cells, so nested values are flattened into one cell rather than being spread across columns.

Anything visual in the HTML - weight, alignment, colour, column widths - has no counterpart in reStructuredText and is dropped. The values are what survives.

The identifier 007 comes out of the reStructuredText as 007. Reading it as a number would have made it 7, and an id that changes value is worse than one that stays text.

The role "Analyst, data" survives with its comma, in one cell rather than split across two. That is the first thing to check in any converted table, and the usual place a reStructuredText file goes wrong.

The quotes around Jonah "Jo" Pryce are left as a plain quote character in the reStructuredText.

A worked example

Three rows of staff data, with an identifier that has a leading zero, a value containing a comma, a value containing quotes and one blank cell. Those are the four places formats disagree, so they are the four places to look.

HTML in

<table>
  <thead>
    <tr><th>id</th><th>name</th><th>role</th><th>started</th><th>hours</th></tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr><td>007</td><td>Halima Yusuf</td><td>Analyst, data</td><td>2024-03-15</td><td>38.5</td></tr>
    <tr><td>012</td><td>Jonah "Jo" Pryce</td><td>Engineer</td><td>2025-11-02</td><td></td></tr>
    <tr><td>104</td><td>Wei Chen</td><td>Manager</td><td>2023-06-30</td><td>40</td></tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

reStructuredText out

===  ================  =============  ==========  =====
id   name              role           started     hours
===  ================  =============  ==========  =====
007  Halima Yusuf      Analyst, data  2024-03-15  38.5
012  Jonah "Jo" Pryce  Engineer       2025-11-02
104  Wei Chen          Manager        2023-06-30  40
===  ================  =============  ==========  =====

Questions

How do I convert HTML to reStructuredText?

Paste your HTML into the box above or drop the file onto it. Check the table in the grid, then copy or download the reStructuredText from the output panel. It takes one step and the data never leaves your browser.

What happens to nested values?

reStructuredText has no nested cell, so a list or object inside a HTML value is flattened into a single cell rather than expanded into extra columns. Split it before converting if the parts need to be separate.

Is there a limit on file size?

No. The work happens on your own machine, so the limit is your machine's memory rather than an upload cap. A file with tens of thousands of rows converts in a second or two.

Is my data uploaded anywhere?

No. The parsing and generating are done by JavaScript running on this page. You can watch the network tab while you convert and see that nothing is sent.