Remote URLs, base64 data URIs and dropped files are fetched, scaled to the page width, centred and embedded in the .docx so the document works offline.
Field report: north site
The drone survey on Tuesday covered the full perimeter.
Figure 1: Aerial view of the north site at 09:40
A small inline logo from a data URI:
Figure 2: Company mark
Each alt text above becomes a numbered figure caption in Word.
Remote https URLs, data URIs and relative paths are all recognised. Drop the actual files for relative paths.
Images load as they are fetched. A placeholder marks anything that could not be reached, with the URL shown.
Every picture is inside the file. Email it, print it, open it on a plane.
A Markdown image is just a reference:  says where a picture lives, not what it contains. Word, on the other hand, expects pictures to be inside the .docx, stored as files under word/media/ and referenced through a relationship id from a drawing element in the text. Word can technically link to external pictures, but linked images break the moment the file is emailed or the URL changes, so a good conversion embeds every image. That is what MDtoDOCX does, and the details of fetching, sizing and accessible descriptions are where converters differ.
Images at https URLs are fetched from your browser. When the host sends permissive CORS headers, the bytes are read directly. When it does not, which is common for image hosts and wikis, the request goes through a small proxy on our server that only accepts image content types, caps each file at 5 MB and keeps no copy. The Markdown text itself is never sent; only the image URL is. Private URLs that need a login cannot be fetched by either route, so download those files and drop them onto the converter instead.
Data URIs are decoded in place with no network request at all, which is why they work offline and are common in exported notebooks and AI chat exports. Relative paths such as ./figures/plot.png cannot currently be resolved by the web converter. Use a data URI or a public HTTPS image URL for those images.
Each image's dimensions are read from the file header. The printable width is the paper width minus both margins. An image wider than that is scaled down proportionally; a smaller image stays at its natural size, so icons remain small and screenshots remain legible. Each picture sits in its own centred paragraph and can still be resized in Word.
Markdown alt text is stored in the drawing's title and description fields, where screen readers and Word's accessibility checker can find it. Non-empty alt text is also placed in a Word Caption-styled paragraph beneath the image. Automatic figure numbers and a generated table of figures are not included yet.
PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP and SVG files are recognised. Raster images are embedded with their measured dimensions. SVG stays vector in current desktop versions of Word; older and third-party viewers may not display it correctly. WebP and AVIF conversion is not available yet.
The free converter embeds up to ten images per document. Pro removes the limit and raises the overall file cap to 50 MB, which matters for reports full of screenshots. Sizing, centring and captions are identical on both tiers. Images inside Word tables are scaled to the cell width instead of the page width. For the rest of the document's inline styles, see Markdown to Word with formatting; if you convert with the command line, note that Pandoc embeds images at their pixel size and often overflows the page.
| Image handling | MDtoDOCX | Pandoc | Copy from a preview |
|---|---|---|---|
| Remote URL images | Fetched and embedded | Fetched and embedded | Often pasted as links that break later |
| Base64 data URIs | Decoded and embedded | Embedded | Usually lost |
| Fit to page width | Automatic, aspect ratio kept | Pixel size at 96 dpi, may overflow | Browser render size |
| Alt text | Accessible description and Caption style | Caption paragraph | Often dropped |
| WebP / AVIF | Not supported yet | Depends on the installed readers | Depends on browser |
| Relative local paths | Drop the files to resolve | Resolved from disk | Broken image icons |
| Works offline after export | Yes, all embedded | Yes | Not if linked |
| Install | None | Pandoc | None |