Convert Markdown to INI Online

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

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Nothing here is uploaded. The parsing happens on this page.
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The output will appear here once there is a table to convert.

What Markdown is

A Markdown table is rows of pipe-separated cells with a dashed rule under the header. Alignment is set by placing colons in that rule.

README files, GitHub issues, documentation sites, Obsidian and Notion.

What INI is

INI is the oldest configuration format still in daily use: named sections, then key equals value lines.

Windows software, PHP, Git and a long tail of tools that never moved on.

What changes when you convert Markdown to INI

Leading and trailing pipes are optional and both are handled. A pipe the author escaped with a backslash is read as data rather than a column break, which is the usual reason a hand-written table parses one column too wide.

Each row becomes a section named after its first column, with one key per remaining column.

What carries over from Markdown to INI

Markdown records 2 things about a table that INI has no way to hold.

INI has no header row. The column names are repeated as keys on every record instead, which is why the result is bigger on disk than the table it came from.

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

The identifier 007 comes out of the INI 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 INI file goes wrong.

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

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.

Markdown in
| 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    |
INI out
[007]
id=007
name=Halima Yusuf
role=Analyst, data
started=2024-03-15
hours=38.5

[012]
id=012
name=Jonah "Jo" Pryce
role=Engineer
started=2025-11-02
hours=

[104]
id=104
name=Wei Chen
role=Manager
started=2023-06-30
hours=40

Questions

How do I convert Markdown to INI?

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

Can a Markdown table cell contain a line break?

Not directly. The row ends at the newline. Use a <br> tag inside the cell, which every common Markdown renderer passes through to the HTML output.

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.

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