The situation:
I set `output_tables_as_HTML=True` on LlamaParse and compare two parses of the same PDF containing one table. The page-level `md` output still shows markdown tables, and `result.pages[0].items[0].md` for the table item is markdown too. Why does `output_tables_as_HTML` have no effect? I need HTML to handle merged cells correctly.
What actually fixes it (verified in the thread):
Expected behavior, not a bug. When you use the structured `Document`/`Page`/`Item` result, `item.md` is always converted back to markdown , even when the raw LlamaParse output contains HTML table tags , to stay consistent with the llama-index-core schema. So `output_tables_as_HTML=True` does not change `items[].md`. To get the actual HTML tables, use the raw LlamaParse output instead: `result.get_markdown()` (or the async variant) returns what the LlamaParse API returned, HTML tables included. The maintainer also opened a PR to expose `item.html` alongside `item.md`, so both formats will be available on the structured items in a later version.