Obsidian to Slack: How to Share Notes in Slack Channels

You've written detailed notes in Obsidian. A project update, a meeting summary, a technical spec. Now your team needs to see it in Slack. You select all, copy, paste into a channel, and the result is a mess of asterisks, hash marks, pipe characters, and broken formatting.

This is one of the most common frustrations for Obsidian users who work in teams that rely on Slack. The problem isn't a bug in either tool. It's a fundamental format mismatch.

Why Obsidian notes break in Slack

Obsidian stores your notes as standard markdown. Slack does not use standard markdown. Slack uses its own formatting language called mrkdwn (yes, without the "a"), and the two formats are different in ways that matter.

Here's the key differences:

When you paste **important deadline** from Obsidian into Slack, Slack sees the double asterisks as literal characters, not bold formatting. Slack expects a single asterisk: *important deadline*. The same mismatch applies to italic, strikethrough, and links.

Headings are an even bigger problem. Obsidian notes commonly use ## section headers to organize content. Slack has no heading concept at all. Your ## Project Status becomes the literal text ## Project Status in the channel.

Tables are completely unsupported. A neatly formatted pipe-and-dash table in Obsidian becomes an unreadable jumble of characters in Slack.

What you lose no matter what

Before covering solutions, it's worth understanding what Slack simply cannot display regardless of how you convert:

Images. Slack messages don't support inline images from markdown. If your Obsidian note has ![screenshot](url) or ![[image.png]], the image won't appear. You'll need to upload images separately as Slack attachments.

Mermaid diagrams. If your notes include Mermaid code blocks, there's no way to render them in Slack. You'd need to export the diagram as an image and upload it.

Math equations. LaTeX math notation ($E = mc^2$) has no rendering support in Slack.

Multi-level headings. Even with conversion, Slack has no heading hierarchy. The best you can do is bold text as a visual separator. An H1 and an H3 will look the same.

Nested tables. Slack has no table rendering. Conversion tools can reformat table data as readable text, but it won't look like a table.

These are Slack platform limitations, not conversion failures. No tool can overcome them.

Method 1: Slackify Note plugin

Obsidian has a community plugin called Slackify Note that converts standard markdown to mrkdwn syntax directly within Obsidian.

How it works: Install the plugin from the community plugin browser. Open a note, run the Slackify command, and it copies a mrkdwn-formatted version to your clipboard. Paste into Slack.

What it handles: Bold conversion (** to *), italic conversion, strikethrough, basic link reformatting.

Limitations: It's a community plugin, which means it depends on a volunteer maintainer. It doesn't handle all elements (complex tables, nested lists, callouts). And it requires you to install and maintain yet another plugin in your Obsidian setup, which, if you've read about Obsidian's plugin complexity, may not be appealing.

The plugin works for simple notes. For anything with tables, complex formatting, or elements beyond basic text styling, the results are incomplete.

Method 2: Manual reformatting

You can manually convert your Obsidian note to mrkdwn before pasting.

The process:

1. Replace all **text** with *text* (bold)
2. Replace all *text* with _text_ (italic)
3. Replace all ~~text~~ with ~text~ (strikethrough)
4. Replace all [text](url) with <url|text> (links)
5. Remove all heading markers (#, ##, etc.) and make the text bold instead
6. Reformat tables as plain text or bullet lists
7. Remove any Obsidian-specific syntax (callouts, wikilinks, tags)

This works. It's also tedious, error-prone, and not something you want to do every time you share a note. For a quick one-paragraph message, it's manageable. For a multi-section document with tables and links, it's painful.

Method 3: Unmarkdown

Unmarkdown™ converts standard markdown to Slack's mrkdwn format automatically.

The workflow:

1. Open your note in Obsidian. Switch to Source mode for the cleanest copy.
2. Select all (Cmd+A or Ctrl+A) and copy (Cmd+C or Ctrl+C).
3. Go to unmarkdown.com and paste into the editor.
4. Click "Slack" in the destination bar.
5. Paste into your Slack channel.

What Unmarkdown™ handles:

• Bold: **text** becomes *text*
• Italic: *text* becomes _text_
• Strikethrough: ~~text~~ becomes ~text~
• Links: [text](url) becomes <url|text>
• Headings: Converted to bold text on its own line (the best Slack can do)
• Tables: Reformatted as clean, readable text since Slack has no table support
• Code blocks: Preserved (triple backticks work in both formats)
• Blockquotes: Preserved (> syntax is the same)
• Lists: Preserved (bullet and numbered syntax is compatible)

The conversion takes about 10 seconds and handles the syntax translation automatically. No plugins to install, no manual find-and-replace.

Tips for sharing Obsidian notes in Slack

Beyond the format conversion, here are practical tips for making your notes work well in Slack channels.

Keep it concise. Long Obsidian notes with multiple sections and tables are overwhelming in a Slack channel. Consider sharing only the relevant section, or summarizing the key points and linking to the full document elsewhere.

Use threads. If you need to share a detailed note, paste it as a thread reply rather than a main channel message. This keeps the channel readable while making the full content available to anyone who wants it.

Break up long notes. Instead of pasting an entire multi-section document, send each section as a separate message with a bold heading. This is easier to read on mobile and gives people natural stopping points.

Skip tables when possible. If your note has a comparison table, consider whether a bullet list would communicate the same information more naturally in a Slack context. Tables that make sense in a document often feel cramped in a message.

Consider the destination. If the content is complex, with tables, diagrams, code blocks, and structured sections, Slack might not be the right destination. A Google Doc or a published page shared as a link in Slack will preserve all the formatting and be more readable.

When Slack isn't the right destination

Some Obsidian notes are too complex for Slack, and that's fine. Unmarkdown™ supports six destinations from the same interface:

• Google Docs for documents with tables, headings, and full formatting
• Word for reports with native heading styles
• Email for sending formatted notes to people outside your Slack workspace
• OneNote for personal notes with full formatting support
• Plain Text for the simplest possible output

You can also publish your note as a shareable web page and drop the link into Slack. The page retains all formatting, including tables, diagrams, and math, and anyone with the link can view it.

Try the Unmarkdown plugin for Obsidian

Unmarkdown is now available as an Obsidian community plugin. Right-click any note and copy it formatted for Google Docs, Word, Slack, OneNote, Email, or Plain Text, directly from your vault. You can also publish notes to the web with 62 templates.

How to install (Community Plugins directory approval pending):

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. In your vault, create the folder .obsidian/plugins/unmarkdown/
3. Move the three downloaded files into that folder
4. Open Obsidian Settings > Community Plugins > Enable "Unmarkdown"
5. Go to Settings > Unmarkdown > Click "Connect account" to link your free Unmarkdown account

Once approved for the Community Plugins directory, you can install by searching "Unmarkdown" in Obsidian's plugin browser.

Related reading

• Obsidian vs Unmarkdown: When You Need Documents, Not Digital Gardens
• Markdown vs Slack mrkdwn: What's the Difference?
• Why Slack Formatting Breaks When You Paste from ChatGPT