diff --git a/starcheck/src/starcheck.pl b/starcheck/src/starcheck.pl
index bed0204a..2c2c7584 100755
--- a/starcheck/src/starcheck.pl
+++ b/starcheck/src/starcheck.pl
@@ -33,7 +33,6 @@
 
 use Cwd qw( abs_path );
 
-use HTML::TableExtract;
 use Carp 'verbose';
 $SIG{__DIE__} = sub { Carp::confess(@_) };
 
@@ -965,41 +964,10 @@ sub json_obsids {
 
 if ($par{text}) {
 
-    my $textout = io("${STARCHECK}.txt");
-
-    my $te = HTML::TableExtract->new();
-    $te->parse($out);
-
-    my %table;
-    foreach my $ts ($te->table_states) {
-
-        #	print "Table (", join(',', $ts->coords), "):\n";
-        my $table_text = qq{};
-        my ($depth, $count) = $ts->coords;
-        foreach my $row ($ts->rows) {
-            $table_text .= $row->[0] . "\n" if defined $row->[0];
-        }
-        if ($table_text =~ /OBSID/s) {
-            $table{$depth}{$count} = $table_text;
-        }
-    }
-
-    #    use Data::Dumper;
-    #    print Dumper %table;
-    for my $depth (sort { $a <=> $b } (keys %table)) {
-        for my $count (sort { $a <=> $b } (keys %{ $table{$depth} })) {
-
-            #	    print " $depth $count \n";
-            my $chunk = $table{$depth}{$count};
-            chomp($chunk);
-            $chunk =~ s/\s+$/\n/;
-            $textout->print("$chunk");
-            $textout->print(
-"==================================================================================== \n"
-            );
-        }
-    }
 
+    my $textout = io("${STARCHECK}.txt");
+    $textout->print(call_python("utils.prehtml2text", [ $out ]));
+    $textout->close;
     print STDERR "Wrote text report to $STARCHECK.txt\n";
 
 }
diff --git a/starcheck/utils.py b/starcheck/utils.py
index e5a765e0..6694b256 100644
--- a/starcheck/utils.py
+++ b/starcheck/utils.py
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 import os
 from pathlib import Path
 import warnings
+from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
 
 import agasc
 import cxotime
@@ -45,6 +46,17 @@
     message=r"\nModel .* computed between .* clipping input mag\(s\) outside that range\.",
 )
 
+def prehtml2text(html_text):
+    """Convert the starcheck report html to plain text."""
+
+    soup = BeautifulSoup(html_text, "lxml")
+
+    # All of the report is basically in the pre tags, so write those out with a separator line.
+    section_separator = "\n" + "=" * 84
+    outs = [pre.get_text() + section_separator for pre in soup.find_all("pre")]
+
+    return "\n".join(outs)
+
 
 def date2secs(val):
     """Convert date to seconds since 1998.0"""