From Conversation to Meeting Notes — Then Into Notion and Google Docs, With Markdown Keeping Every Bit of Formatting

Most meeting-notes tools fail at the same point: they turn a conversation into text, then trap the result inside their own app. You have a nice summary and a list of action items — but your team runs on Notion, your project lives in Google Docs, your personal notes are in Obsidian, and your action items belong in Todoist. So you're back where you started: copy, paste, re-format, rebuilding every heading and list by hand.

Traverba solves this last-mile problem with two things. First, it turns a live conversation or an existing recording into structured notes, not just a wall of text. Second, it lets you export as Markdown — a universal format nearly every modern tool understands, one that carries your headings, bold text, lists and checkboxes across intact.

This is a practical guide: first how Traverba produces the notes, then a step-by-step walkthrough of getting them into every tool you use day to day.

The 30-second version

1. Record a meeting live with Live Notes, run a multilingual team meeting with Group Notes, or import an existing recording with Media Notes.
2. The app hands back a transcript, summary, key decisions and action items — all produced on your device.
3. Tap Export and choose Markdown (.md).
4. Import the .md file (or the copied content) into Notion, Google Docs, Obsidian, Word or your task tool — formatting preserved.

Here's each step in detail.

Step 1: Turn the conversation into structured notes

Traverba offers three features that generate notes, all producing the same result — each suited to a different meeting situation:

• Live Notes — instant recording. Hit record when the meeting starts, put your phone where it can hear the room, and focus on the conversation. Live captions appear line by line as people speak; you never type. This is the fastest way to handle an in-person one-on-one or small-group conversation.
• Group Notes — multilingual team meetings. Almost identical to Live Notes, with two differences: the connection and the speaker identification. Participants join the same meeting from their own devices, each following along live in their own language, and the notes label speakers by named participant (rather than just "You" and "Others"). It's especially useful for Hong Kong meetings that mix Cantonese, English and Mandarin, or for any international team.
• Media Notes — import an existing recording. Already have an audio file or a recorded meeting? Import it with Media Notes and Traverba transcribes, summarises and organises it the same way. This is how you handle recordings after the fact.

Whichever you use, the notes come back with the same structure — which means the export and import steps below apply to all three.

Once you stop (or the import finishes), you don't get a wall of text — you get four parts:

1. A full transcript — every line, with speakers labelled where needed.
2. A summary — a few sentences on what the meeting covered.
3. Key decisions — each with the reasoning behind it, exactly what you need when someone later asks "why did we decide that?"
4. Action items — each with an owner and a deadline.

That structure is the key to everything that follows. Because the notes have a clear hierarchy — headings, paragraphs, lists, checkboxes — they map cleanly onto the same elements in your destination tool when exported as Markdown.

Everything runs on-device. Transcription, summarisation and organisation all happen on your phone; no meeting audio is uploaded to anyone's cloud. Exporting simply hands you a file that was already yours.

Step 2: Why Markdown?

Markdown is a lightweight plain-text format that uses simple symbols for structure — # for headings, - for lists, - [ ] for action-item checkboxes. It looks humble, but it's a superpower: nearly every modern productivity tool can read Markdown.

That means when you export a Markdown note, you're moving more than text — you're moving the formatting itself. Headings stay headings, bullets stay bullets, and a to-do list is still a set of checkable boxes after it lands in Notion or Obsidian. You don't re-format anything, because the structure travels with the content.

Traverba lets you export three formats, each with its own use:

For moving between tools while keeping the styling, Markdown is the first choice. Here's how, tool by tool.

Step 3: Import into Notion

Notion supports Markdown well, making it one of the smoothest paths.

Method 1 — import the file (most reliable):

1. Export the note as Markdown (.md) in Traverba.
2. Open the Notion page where you want the content.
3. Click Import in the left sidebar and choose Text & Markdown.
4. Select your .md file. Notion converts headings, lists and checkboxes into native Notion blocks.

Method 2 — paste directly (good for short content):

Open the exported Markdown, copy the content, and paste it straight into a Notion page. Notion converts the Markdown syntax into formatted blocks on the fly. This is the fastest route for a short summary.

Tip: Importing the file is more reliable than pasting, especially for longer notes with nested lists. Elements like footnotes and complex tables may be simplified on import.

Step 4: Import into Google Docs

Google Docs now supports Markdown too, but it's off by default — turn it on first.

1. In Google Docs, go to Tools → Preferences.
2. Tick Enable Markdown and save.
3. Copy the exported Markdown content from Traverba.
4. In the document, right-click → Paste from Markdown. Headings, bold and lists convert into Google Docs formatting.

⚠️ Note: A plain Ctrl/⌘ + V only pastes the raw text with symbols intact. You have to right-click and choose Paste from Markdown every time for the formatting to take.

Alternative — use the Word file instead: If the Markdown toggle is a hassle, export Word (.docx) from Traverba, upload it to Google Drive and open it with Google Docs. The formatting carries over directly, no settings required.

Step 5: Import into Obsidian (and other Markdown note tools)

If you use Obsidian, this step barely counts as "importing" — Obsidian stores everything as Markdown .md files natively. Your exported file is Obsidian's native format.

1. Export the note as Markdown (.md) in Traverba.
2. Drag the .md file into Obsidian's file explorer, or drop it into your vault folder.
3. Done. Every heading, internal link and checkbox is immediately usable, with zero formatting loss.

The same approach works for other Markdown-first tools — Logseq, Bear, Joplin, Typora and so on. This is also why Markdown export is so valuable to anyone who cares about owning their data: your meeting notes are a plain, portable, future-proof text file, not locked into any single platform.

Step 6: Get action items into your task tool

The summary goes into your notes tool, but action items often need to go somewhere else — Todoist, Asana, Trello, ClickUp or Things.

The action items Traverba generates are a Markdown checklist that looks like this:

- [ ] Maria to finalise the supplier contract by Friday
- [ ] Kevin to send the revised budget to the finance team
- [ ] Schedule a follow-up meeting next week

There are a few ways to move them into a task tool:

• Copy them one by one. The most direct: paste each item as a task. Fastest when there are only a few.
• Paste the whole list. Tools like Todoist and TickTick can turn multiple lines of plain text into multiple tasks at once — one line, one task.
• Use an import tool. Extensions like Taskbone can import a plain-text / Markdown list into Todoist; tools like Any.do also offer paste-to-import.
• Use Zapier / automation. The advanced route: pipe action items automatically into Asana, Trello or Todoist via Zapier — ideal for teams with frequent meetings who want to skip the manual step.

Whichever route you take, because the action items start as a clean, structured list (each with an owner and deadline), you don't have to tidy them up when turning them into tasks.

A recommended workflow

Put it together and a smooth post-meeting routine looks like this:

1. Record in Traverba during the meeting (or import the recording afterwards).
2. After stopping, quickly check the summary and action items — fix speaker labels or add any decision that was only implied.
3. Export Markdown and import it into your team's knowledge base — Notion or Google Docs.
4. Paste the action items into your task tool so they enter your actual workflow.
5. For a final version to send a client or archive, also export a PDF.

The whole thing takes a few minutes, and because the formatting travels with the content, you never redo any layout.

Why this beats "copy-pasting the transcript"

Many AI meeting tools just hand you a wall of transcript, or lock the summary inside a web dashboard you have to keep paying a monthly fee to access. You end up organising by hand, re-formatting, shuffling data between apps.

Traverba flips that:

• The notes are structured — summary, decisions and action items are distinct, not one wall of text.
• Markdown carries the structure — headings, lists and checkboxes still hold up after landing in your destination tool.
• Everything runs on-device — meeting audio never leaves your phone; exporting just hands you a file that was already yours.
• No platform lock-in — your notes are ordinary .md / .docx / .pdf files that go anywhere and stay readable forever.

The value of meeting notes isn't in capturing them in the moment — it's in actually using them afterwards. Getting notes into the place your team really works is what makes them pay off, and Markdown is the bridge that makes it effortless.

Try it

Live Notes is free — open Traverba and start recording, no account and no setup. Record a live meeting with Live Notes, run a multilingual team meeting with Group Notes, or import an existing recording with Media Notes. It transcribes on your device in 30+ spoken languages, translates live, and hands you a summary, decisions and action items you can export to Markdown, PDF or Word — or drop straight into your tools.

At your next meeting, stop being the person hunched over a keyboard taking notes. Record it, export Markdown, import it into Notion or Google Docs — then get back to what actually matters.

Further reading: How to Use Live Notes for Meetings and The Bot-Free AI Meeting Assistant.