Export Obsidian and Notion notes to a styled PDF

Obsidian and Notion are great places to think, but sooner or later a note has to leave the app: a meeting summary for a client, study notes for a classmate, a project brief for your manager. The built-in exports work, yet they give you little control over typography and page layout. Because both apps speak Markdown, you can take the note out as plain text and turn it into a PDF that looks designed, in a couple of minutes and without uploading anything.

Why go through Markdown

Markdown is the common language of note-taking apps. Once a note is a .md file, you can style it however you like, keep a copy under version control, or reuse it elsewhere. The Markdown to PDF editor renders it with real typographic themes, supports tables, code, footnotes, Mermaid diagrams and LaTeX math, and prints through your browser, so the PDF keeps selectable, searchable text.

Exporting from Obsidian

Obsidian stores every note as a Markdown file inside your vault folder, so there is nothing to export: right-click the note, choose Reveal in system explorer (or Show in Finder), and you have the file. In the editor, click Open .md file and pick it, or simply copy the note’s text and paste it into the Markdown pane.

Obsidian syntax that needs attention

Obsidian adds a few extensions that are not part of standard Markdown. They will not break anything, but they show up as literal text, so fix them before printing:

• Wikilinks such as [[Project plan]] appear with their brackets. Replace them with plain text, or with a normal link like [Project plan](https://…). If you share notes often, turn off Use [[Wikilinks]] in Settings → Files and links so Obsidian writes standard links from now on.
• Embeds such as ![[diagram.png]] or ![[Other note]] are not resolved. Paste the content of the embedded note directly, and use images from a public URL (![alt text](https://…/diagram.png)): local vault images cannot be read by a web page.
• Front matter (the --- block of properties at the top) is not metadata here; it would print as a line and some text. Delete it.
• Callouts like > [!note] print as a normal blockquote with the marker visible. Remove the [!note] part and, if you want a title, start the quote with a bold word.
• Highlights (==text==) and tags (#tag) print as typed. Use bold for emphasis and remove tags you do not need.

Math between $…$ and $$…$$ and mermaid code blocks work the same way as in Obsidian.

Exporting from Notion

In Notion, open the page, click the ••• menu, choose Export and select Markdown & CSV. Include subpages if you need them. Notion downloads a .zip file: unzip it and you will find one .md file per page (the file names end with a long ID, which you can ignore), a folder per page with subpages or images, and a .csv file for each database.

• Open the page’s .md file in the editor with Open .md file.
• Databases come out as CSV. Turn them into a Markdown table with the CSV to Markdown converter and paste the table where you want it.
• Images are saved as local files next to the page, so the links will not load in a web page. Replace them with public URLs or remove them.
• Toggles are exported as regular text or lists, and callouts lose their icon. Read the note once and adjust anything that no longer makes sense on paper.
• Equations: if an equation appears as LaTeX between dollar signs, the editor renders it with KaTeX; if not, wrap the formula in $…$ yourself.

Give it a style

Open the Style panel. There are six themes: Classic and Editorial use serif fonts that are comfortable for long reading notes, Modern and Clean suit work documents, Friendly is softer for handouts, and Technical pairs a sans-serif with a monospaced font for notes full of code. Adjust the font size (10.5 to 11 pt reads well on paper), choose A4 or Letter and set the margins. The preview shows the page exactly as it will print.

Exporting several notes at once? Paste them into one document and put <!-- pagebreak --> on its own line between them, so each note starts on a new page.

Export the PDF

1. Click Download PDF. Your browser’s print dialog opens.
2. Choose Save as PDF as the destination.
3. Turn off Headers and footers to remove the date and URL, and keep Background graphics on so tables and code blocks keep their shading.

The result has real, selectable text and sharp fonts. If you need a file in one click and do not mind that the text becomes an image, use More → Quick PDF instead.

Quick checklist

• No [[wikilinks]], ![[embeds]] or front matter left.
• Images point to public URLs.
• One # heading as the title: it is also used as the file name.
• Page breaks between notes, headers and footers off in the print dialog.

Everything happens in your browser: your notes are never uploaded, which matters when they contain client or personal information.