Paste markdown as HTML/Rich Text

[bwat47]

Description of the new feature / enhancement

The advanced paste module has a great feature where you can copy formatted text and paste as markdown

It would be amazing if it could also go the other way around: convert markdown from clipboard and paste as HTML formatted text

For example:

User copies the following markdown to clipboard:

## Test Heading

Test text **bold text** and *italic text*

Test list:

1. A
2. B
3. C
	- unordered list 1
	- unordered list 2

User then selects "Paste as HTML" from PowerToys and it converts markdown to semantic HTML markup, allowing you to paste with with formatting in apps such as Outlook:

<h2>Test Heading</h2>
<p>Test text <strong>bold text</strong> and <em>italic text</em></p>
<p>Test list:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>A</p>
</li>
<li><p>B</p>
</li>
<li><p>C</p>
<ul>
<li>unordered list 1</li>
<li>unordered list 2</li>

</ul>
</li>

</ol>

Scenario when this would be used?

This would be useful when copying text from markdown based applications to applications that only support HTML/rich text formatting (e.g. Copying markdown formatted text to an Outlook email).

Markdown note takers and editors often lack an adequate "Copy with HTML formatting to clipboard" function, so this could be a very useful feature.

Supporting information

No response

[Korb]

Am I correct in understanding that implementing this proposal will also help paste Grok' responses into Google Docs as formatted text without having to paste the text as plain text and then assign all the styles manually?

[bwat47]

Am I correct in understanding that implementing this proposal will also help paste Grok' responses into Google Docs as formatted text without having to paste the text as plain text and then assign all the styles manually?

Yes, that's the idea! (provided that the grok responses are plain text formatted as markdown in your example)

[danielsada]

I also need this, I started a spec here:
#45706

[JimTheFrog]

I don't mean to overload this issue, but it seems like a more general "Paste as HTML text" feature would work perfectly for this and other cases.

AFAIK, Windows internally stores clipboard items as plain text (CF_UNICODETEXT) + RTF (CF_RTF, when available from source) + HTML (CF_HTML, when available from source). Presumably markdown is always plain text only. This feature could be smart enough to:

• Paste the HTML if present
• Convert RTF to HTML if RTF is present but not HTML
• Paste plain text (if no RTF or HTML), converting any markdown codes to HTML

There's already a "Paste as .html file" option, which I use by pasting to a file, opening the file, copying out the HTML, and pasting it. This is a pain, but it pretty clearly indicates the tool can grab the HTML and ought to just be able to paste it directly.

Some apps (VS Code?) might render markdown to HTML during copy, so this feature would just use the "natively rendered" HTML from markdown, which should be fine.

Daniel Sada (@danielsada), are you ok with me adding this as an enhancement to your spec?

[RamonRiosJr]

Hi all, I just submitted PR #49460 to implement Paste as Rich Text using the existing Markdig dependency. I see there is an ongoing discussion here about whether it would be better to have HTML as a single output for multiple transformations (like a Word Processor). I'd love to align my PR with whatever architectural direction the core team decides on. Let me know how I can pivot my current PR to match the vision