Free Word to EPUB — Convert DOCX, Markdown and TXT to EPUB

Worked example

Drop one Word file, Harbour Notes.docx. Its properties give the title "Harbour Notes" and the author "A. Reid". It has three Heading 1 lines (Arrival, The Road, Home), two Heading 2 lines under "The Road" and two PNG pictures. The list says "1 file", Title and Author are filled in, and the chapter buttons read "Automatic (Heading 1)". The side panel says "Contents: 3 chapters" and "Include 2 pictures" is ticked. Press "Create EPUB". After "Creating…" the page says "Your EPUB has 3 chapters and 2 pictures." and shows Download with the size. The file is Harbour Notes.epub, and the two Heading 2 lines are sub-entries of "The Road" in the reader's contents. Now press "Heading 2". The panel changes to "Contents: 5 chapters", because Heading 1 lines still start chapters, and the button goes back to "Create EPUB" because the old file no longer matches.

Which settings to use, and the limits

• Put the files in book order before you create the book. Drop up to 200 files, each under 100 MB. The list reads "3 files, in book order", with "Move up" and "Move down" arrows (↑ and ↓) and a "Remove" cross on each row, and the book follows that order. "Add more files" adds to the end. If a pick would pass 200, the extra files are left out and the page names the first three: "3 files were not added because this tool takes up to 200 files: a.docx, b.docx, c.docx, …". "Start over" clears the list and your edits to Title, Author and Language.
• Choose where each new chapter starts. "Start a new chapter at" has "Automatic", "Heading 1", "Heading 2" and "Each file". Automatic counts headings in all the files together. It picks Heading 1 if there are at least two Heading 1 lines, then Heading 2 if there are at least two of those, and otherwise one chapter per file. The button shows the choice, for example "Automatic (Heading 2)". With "Heading 2", Heading 1 lines also start a chapter. Text before a file's first heading becomes a chapter named after the document's title or the file name. The panel lists the first 300 chapters and then "+" and the number left.
• Mark chapters in Word and Markdown files. In Word, use Heading 1 for chapters and Heading 2 for sections inside them. The "Title" style is not a chapter: it is suggested as the book title. "Subtitle" stays an ordinary paragraph, and "Quote" and "Intense Quote" become block quotes. In a Markdown file (.md or .markdown), lines starting with # are headings, and a title: line in the front matter at the top is used as the title. From Word, bold, italics, underline, strikethrough, superscript, subscript, lists, tables and links starting with http, https or mailto: are kept. Fonts, colours and page layout are not, so the reader's own settings apply.
• Prepare a plain text file. A .txt file is read as plain text even if it has # lines. A line on its own such as "Chapter 3", "Part IV: The Sea", "Prologue", "第三章" or "Глава 3" becomes a chapter heading, and "* * *" becomes a scene break. A line holding only a number of up to three digits, or capital Roman numerals such as IV, also counts as a heading, so delete stray page numbers first. Hard-wrapped lines are joined into paragraphs. A file with more than 8 text lines and fewer blank lines than a tenth of them gets one paragraph per line. The encoding is detected; UTF-8 is the safe choice.
• Set the title, author, language and cover. Title comes from the Word properties, then a Word "Title" paragraph or Markdown front matter, then the first file's name. Author comes from the Word properties. "Language" is guessed from the first 40,000 characters, with the page language as the fallback. Readers use it for hyphenation and the dictionary, and right-to-left languages such as Arabic, Persian and Hebrew turn the book right-to-left. "Add a cover picture" keeps a JPG or PNG up to 2,560 px on its longest side as it is. Any other picture, or a larger one, is redrawn as a JPEG of at most 2,560 px on a white background.
• Decide about pictures, then name and rebuild. When the Word files hold pictures, a box reads "Include 2 pictures". Untick it for a text-only book. Only JPEG, PNG and GIF pictures are kept; EMF, WMF and TIFF are left out because e-readers cannot show them, and pictures in Markdown files are not included. The file is named after the Title box, with \ / : * ? " < > | turned into spaces and the name cut at 100 characters, or after the first file when the box is empty. Change the files, title, author, language, split, pictures or cover after building and the button returns to "Create EPUB". Press it again.

Common problems and how to fix them

It says "report.doc is a DOC file, which this tool can't open." (with your own file name and type)

The drop zone looks inside the file, not only at its name, and refuses a format the tool cannot read as soon as you choose it. An old .doc is a different format from .docx, and a PDF or another file is refused the same way. Open an old .doc in Word and save it as .docx, or copy the text into a .txt file. A PDF can go to PDF to EPUB instead. A file whose type cannot be told gets "File type not supported: " and its name.

It says "1 file could not be read. Use a .docx, .md or .txt file under 100 MB (old .doc files: save them as .docx in Word first)."

The file passed the first check but could not be turned into text. It may be over 100 MB, a zip file that is not a Word document, a damaged .docx, or a file that failed while being read. Open it in Word, save a copy as .docx and add the copy. A 0-byte cloud placeholder is refused earlier with "is empty (0 bytes)"; download it to the device first.

It says "The EPUB could not be created. Try fewer files or leave out the pictures."

Any failure while the chapters, pictures and zip archive are put together shows this one message. The whole book is built in the page's memory, so many files or large pictures make it more likely, most of all on a phone or an older computer. Untick "Include 2 pictures" (your own count), remove files, or use a smaller cover, then press "Create EPUB" again. Splitting a very large set into two books is the other option.

The book has one chapter and the page says "No headings found, so the book is one chapter. In Word, mark chapter titles with the Heading 1 style; in a text file, put lines like "Chapter 1" on their own."

Automatic found fewer than two Heading 1 lines and fewer than two Heading 2 lines, so it used one chapter per file. The note shows only when there is one file and it ends up as one chapter. Chapter titles that are only bold or large normal text are not headings. Apply Heading 1 in Word, or put "Chapter 1" style lines on their own in a .txt file, then use "Start over" and add the file again.

It says "This picture could not be read. Try a JPG or PNG." under Cover.

The cover is opened with your browser's own image decoder. It fails for a file that is not a picture or that your browser cannot open. Unlike the main drop zone, the cover button does not convert iPhone HEIC photos. Save the picture as JPG or PNG and choose it again. A failed pick does not remove a cover you already added.

How it compares

This tool turns Word, Markdown and text files into one reflowable EPUB 3, with an older contents file included for old readers. You can set a title, author, language, cover and chapter split, and join many files into one book. It has no series, publisher or description fields, no custom fonts or styles, and no fixed page layout. Word's page layout, fonts and colours are not carried over. It cannot open .doc, PDF or other e-book formats; PDF to EPUB handles PDFs. A desktop e-book editor gives finer control over styling and metadata. In exchange, nothing needs installing, and the files are read and packed in your browser and not uploaded. For Kindle, use Send to Kindle, which converts the EPUB.