Without an add-in (it may or may not exist anymore), Word cannot natively read from (and format) or write to (with markup) Markdown. Ask any one of several nove

Without an add-in (it may or may not exist anymore), Word cannot natively read from (and format) or write to (with markup) Markdown. Ask any one of several novelists who work in Markdown; once you convert it to Word (presumably via Pandoc) and send it to your editor/publisher, it stays in Word throughout the rest of the editorial process.