1

I have 700+ Word documents (mostly in .docm format), the contents being a mixture of text and tables.

I'm trying to extract info from the tables. After much searching the only Python library that can detect tables is python-docx, which breaks when pointed at .docm files. The GitHub thread indicates this issue hasn't been addressed.

Further searching implies to convert .docm to .docx will require me to learn VB or C#, which isn't happening in the timescale I have unless I can acquire an absolutely clear explain-like-i'm-five kinda solution.

Is there any way to achieve this or a potential alternative route?

Community
  • 1
  • 1
James Cooper
  • 57
  • 3
  • 11
  • My company just did something similar for excel using win32 in Python. This dictates that you're running on Windows though. C# and VB will probably just be using the same win32 API so you should be able to code something similar in python with the pywin32 stuff installed. A cursory google search turned up this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10366596/how-to-read-contents-of-an-table-in-ms-word-file-using-python – sehafoc May 16 '18 at 18:55

2 Answers2

1

The python library you are looking for is called docx2python. I had an almost identical problem and it worked great with .docm files.

Doug
  • 234
  • 4
  • 11
0

Infarct you can use the Python-docx library with a minor modification, as detailed, in this pull request on the project's GitHub, which unfortunately has not been accepted.

Pull Request #716: added support for .docm files

It consist on Three small modification on the library files that enables the loading of .docm files. it will allow you to load these type of files read & modify the standard part of these files but it will not allow you to play with the macros.

JMRog
  • 1
  • 1