DOCX Processing Guide

Create, edit, and analyze Word documents (.docx files).

Decision Tree

What do you need to do?
├─ Read/Analyze → Use pandoc for text extraction
├─ Create New → Use docx-js (JavaScript)
└─ Edit Existing
    ├─ Simple changes → Basic OOXML editing
    └─ Professional/Legal → Redlining workflow (tracked changes)

Reading Documents

Text Extraction with Pandoc

# Convert to markdown (preserves structure)
pandoc document.docx -o output.md

# Include tracked changes
pandoc --track-changes=all document.docx -o output.md

Raw XML Access

DOCX files are ZIP archives containing XML:

# Unpack to see structure
unzip document.docx -d unpacked/

Key files:

word/document.xml - Main content
word/comments.xml - Comments
word/media/ - Images and media

Creating New Documents

Use docx-js (JavaScript library):

import { Document, Packer, Paragraph, TextRun } from "docx";
import * as fs from "fs";

const doc = new Document({
  sections: [{
    children: [
      new Paragraph({
        children: [
          new TextRun({ text: "Hello World", bold: true }),
        ],
      }),
    ],
  }],
});

Packer.toBuffer(doc).then((buffer) => {
  fs.writeFileSync("output.docx", buffer);
});

Install: npm install docx

Editing Existing Documents

For Simple Changes

Use Python with python-docx:

from docx import Document

doc = Document('input.docx')
for para in doc.paragraphs:
    if 'old text' in para.text:
        para.text = para.text.replace('old text', 'new text')
doc.save('output.docx')

For Tracked Changes (Redlining)

Professional documents require tracked changes:

Extract current content:

pandoc --track-changes=all document.docx -o current.md

Unpack document:
```
unzip document.docx -d unpacked/
```

Edit XML directly with tracked change markers:

<!-- Deletion -->
<w:del><w:r><w:delText>old text</w:delText></w:r></w:del>

<!-- Insertion -->
<w:ins><w:r><w:t>new text</w:t></w:r></w:ins>

Repack document:
```
cd unpacked && zip -r ../output.docx *
```

Converting to Images

# DOCX → PDF
soffice --headless --convert-to pdf document.docx

# PDF → Images
pdftoppm -jpeg -r 150 document.pdf page
# Creates: page-1.jpg, page-2.jpg, etc.

Required Tools

# Text extraction
sudo apt-get install pandoc

# PDF conversion
sudo apt-get install libreoffice poppler-utils

# JavaScript creation
npm install docx

# Python editing
pip install python-docx

Best Practices

Minimal edits: Only mark text that actually changes
Preserve formatting: Keep original run styles when possible
Batch changes: Group related edits together
Verify output: Always check final document opens correctly

docx-processing