muTEXtum

mu/TEX/tum – Obsidian plugin

mutextum (n.): That which has been changed by weaving — a document unwoven from its native form and rewoven as text. From Latin mutare ("to change") + texere ("to weave") + -tum (result).

A document converter for Obsidian. Converts Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OpenDocument, RTF, EPUB, CSV, and PDF documents into Markdown. Mutare et notare ("To change and note").

Security and Privacy

See SECURITY.

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Features

• On-device conversion – All conversion happens locally; no external services, no API keys, no network requests, no system dependencies

• Broad format support – Word (.doc, .docx), PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx), Excel (.xlsx), OpenDocument (.odt, .ods, .odp), RTF (.rtf), EPUB (.epub), CSV (.csv), and PDF (.pdf)

• Right-click conversion – Convert any supported file already in your vault via the file context menu (right-click on desktop, long-press on mobile); the menu item appears only for supported formats¹

• Multi-note mode – Long documents are split into one note per top-level (#) heading, inside a subfolder named after the source file, with an index note listing all chapters; if no top-level headings are found, the document is written as a single note instead

• Link cleanup – Internal EPUB anchor links are removed²; adjacent bold and italic spans left dangling by link removal are merged back into continuous formatting

• Conflict handling – If a destination note or folder already exists, a dialog asks whether to overwrite, rename, or skip

• Optional frontmatter – Add YAML frontmatter to each generated note with source filename, conversion timestamp, and plugin version

• Desktop and mobile support

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Settings

• Destination folder – Where converted notes are written (default: Imports)
• Include frontmatter – Write YAML frontmatter in every generated note

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Known Limitations

• PDFs with image-only pages are not supported; these require optical character recognition; text-based PDFs convert normally
• Some PDFs convert with garbled text; the PDF's internal text layer is the problem, not the conversion
• Encrypted documents cannot be converted
• Multi-note splitting is based on top-level (#) headings only; documents without any H1 headings are written as a single note, regardless of length
• Output quality depends on the source. Conversion preserves what the original document contains; poorly formatted sources, broken hyperlinks, or inconsistent styling in the original will be reflected in the converted Markdown (the converter cannot repair what was never structured correctly)

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Performance

Conversion is fast for typical documents, but very large files may take a moment. The source file remains untouched throughout.

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Installation & Updating

1. In your vault's .obsidian/plugins/ directory, make a directory (folder) called mutextum, if you don't already have one
2. Download main.js, styles.css and manifest.json and put them in that directory (over-writing to update)
3. If not already enabled, enable mu/TEX/tum in Obsidian Settings → Community plugins
4. In Settings → Files and links, enable Detect all file extensions so supported documents appear in the File Explorer and can be right-clicked¹

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Feedback, etc.

Feel free to get in touch and post any issues and/or suggestions

My other Obsidian plugins:

• con[VER]sum: GitHub repo, Obsidian Community
• in(REF)ens: GitHub repo, Obsidian Community
• tra.VER:ture: GitHub repo, Obsidian Community

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Footnotes

1. Obsidian only shows supported file types in the File Explorer by default. Enable Detect all file extensions in Settings → Files and links to make documents like .docx, .epub, and .pdf visible and right-clickable. ↩ ↩²

2. jw.org links are stripped automatically, so tra.VER:ture can handle scripture linking ↩