# How to copy text in markdown format from marks **URL:** \ **Category:** Uncategorized\ **Created:** [September 16, 2021, 3:51am UTC](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/t/how-to-copy-text-in-markdown-format-from-marks/4054 "2021-09-16T03:51:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![nokola](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/user_avatar/discuss.prosemirror.net/nokola/32/2332_2.png) [@nokola](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/u/nokola)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2021, 3:51am UTC](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/t/how-to-copy-text-in-markdown-format-from-marks/4054/1 "2021-09-16T03:51:01Z")
Looked around the forum, online and in source, but couldn’t find the solution yet. Wondering how to copy-paste a mark from ProseMirror to notepad (plain text), but keep markdown styling. For example, I’d like to copy this in ProseMirror: test **bold** test Then paste it in Notepad, and get this: `test **bold** test` I’m looking for bold as the easiest example, but would like to do similar thing for links, annotations (custom mark) etc. ---
**Author:** ![marijn](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/user_avatar/discuss.prosemirror.net/marijn/32/15_2.png) [@marijn](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/u/marijn)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2021, 5:53am UTC](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/t/how-to-copy-text-in-markdown-format-from-marks/4054/2 "2021-09-16T05:53:44Z")
The general idea would be to register DOM [event handlers](https://prosemirror.net/docs/ref/#view.EditorProps.handleDOMEvents) for “copy” (and maybe “cut”), and in those, take the selected [content](https://prosemirror.net/docs/ref/#state.Selection.content) and run that through a [`MarkdownSerializer`](https://github.com/ProseMirror/prosemirror-markdown/#class-markdownserializer). That only takes a node, so you may need to wrap the slice’s `fragment` property in a node (I think an arbitrary node will do) for it to work. ---
**Author:** ![nokola](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/user_avatar/discuss.prosemirror.net/nokola/32/2332_2.png) [@nokola](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/u/nokola)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2021, 4:21pm UTC](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/t/how-to-copy-text-in-markdown-format-from-marks/4054/3 "2021-09-16T16:21:56Z")
Thank you! I appreciate the super fast and helpful response, feeling excited to try out the suggestion! While looking at event handlers I noticed [clipboardTextParser](https://prosemirror.net/docs/ref/#view.EditorProps.clipboardTextParser) - would that be better to use instead of DOM copy/cut events? I’m trying it out now. Found a related issue where I cannot copy a block element that is first in list, will open a separate discuss topic. ---
**Author:** ![marijn](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/user_avatar/discuss.prosemirror.net/marijn/32/15_2.png) [@marijn](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/u/marijn)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2021, 9:42pm UTC](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/t/how-to-copy-text-in-markdown-format-from-marks/4054/4 "2021-09-16T21:42:40Z")
`clipboardTextParser` goes the other way. But yeah, [`clipboardTextSerializer`](https://prosemirror.net/docs/ref/#view.EditorProps.clipboardTextSerializer) does what you need here in a simpler way then what I was going on about before. ---
**Author:** ![bhl](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/user_avatar/discuss.prosemirror.net/bhl/32/4074_2.png) [@bhl](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/u/bhl)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2021, 10:42pm UTC](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/t/how-to-copy-text-in-markdown-format-from-marks/4054/5 "2021-09-16T22:42:48Z")
There’s a good example of how to use the `clipboardTextSerializer` here [https://github.com/ueberdosis/tiptap/blob/main/packages/core/src/extensions/clipboardTextSerializer.ts](https://github.com/ueberdosis/tiptap/blob/main/packages/core/src/extensions/clipboardTextSerializer.ts), [https://github.com/ueberdosis/tiptap/commit/fe6a3e7491f6a42123d3d8a92ab588f2a40d7799](https://github.com/ueberdosis/tiptap/commit/fe6a3e7491f6a42123d3d8a92ab588f2a40d7799), [Replace Image With Text On Text Copy - #7 by jorisgu](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/t/replace-image-with-text-on-text-copy/3518/7). ---
**Author:** ![nokola](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/user_avatar/discuss.prosemirror.net/nokola/32/2332_2.png) [@nokola](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/u/nokola)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2021, 6:16am UTC](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/t/how-to-copy-text-in-markdown-format-from-marks/4054/6 "2021-10-12T06:16:04Z")
Just for information in case someone else looks for the same behavior. I ended up using a slightly modified version of [prosemirror-markdown/to\_markdown.js](https://github.com/ProseMirror/prosemirror-markdown/blob/master/src/to_markdown.js). I made some changes to my custom-flavor markdown (github + extensions) 1. Serialize paragraphs as single line 2. Serialize bold as \* instead of \*\* I also updated some of the node serializers to use my custom implementation. Here’s some code, using tiptap.dev to access the underlying ProseMirror API directly: ```ts import { defaultMarkdownSerializer, MarkdownSerializer, MarkdownSerializerState } from "../markdown/to_markdown"; new Plugin({ key: new PluginKey('clipboardTextSerializer'), props: { clipboardTextSerializer: (slice: Slice): string => { const serializer: MarkdownSerializer = getMarkdownSerializer(this.editor.schema as any); return serializer.serialize(slice.content as any, { tightLists: true, paragraphNewlines: 1, // tight newlines }); // old code // const { editor } = this; // const { state, schema } = editor; // const { doc, selection } = state; // const { from, to } = selection; // const textSerializers = getTextSeralizersFromSchema(schema as any); // const range = { from, to }; // return getTextBetween(doc, range, { textSerializers }); }, // handleDOMEvents: { // copy: (view: EditorView, event: ClipboardEvent) => { // console.log("COPY!!!"); // return false; // } // }, }, }), function getMarkdownSerializer(schema: Schema) { const serializer: MarkdownSerializer = defaultMarkdownSerializer; serializer.marks['bold'] = { open: "*", close: "*", mixable: true, expelEnclosingWhitespace: true }; serializer.marks['highlight'] = { open: "==", close: "==", mixable: true, expelEnclosingWhitespace: true }; serializer.marks['italic'] = { open: "_", close: "_", mixable: true, expelEnclosingWhitespace: true }; serializer.marks['strike'] = { open: " ~~", close: "~~", mixable: true, expelEnclosingWhitespace: true }; Object.entries(schema.nodes).forEach(([name, tiptapNode]) => { if (!tiptapNode.spec.toText) { return; } serializer.nodes[name] = (state: MarkdownSerializerState, node: Node, parent?: Node, index?: number) => { state.write(tiptapNode.spec.toText({ node, pos: -1, parent, index })); if (!tiptapNode.spec.inline) { state.closeBlock(node); } }; }); //serializer.nodes['blockquote'] serializer.nodes['bulletList'] = serializer.nodes.bullet_list; serializer.nodes['codeBlock'] = serializer.nodes.code_block; serializer.nodes['hardBreak'] = serializer.nodes.hard_break; //serializer.nodes['heading'] serializer.nodes['horizontalRule'] = serializer.nodes.horizontal_rule; //serializer.nodes['image'] serializer.nodes['listItem'] = serializer.nodes.list_item; serializer.nodes['orderedList'] = serializer.nodes.ordered_list; //serializer.nodes['paragraph'] //serializer.nodes['scribeTask'] //serializer.nodes['tableOfContents'] //serializer.nodes['text'] return serializer; } ``` Here’s an example of the `toText()` function for e.g. the tableOfContents node: ```auto return "[[toc]]\r\n"; ``` Hope this helps someone.