docx skill

---
name: docx
description: Comprehensive document creation, editing, and analysis with support for tracked changes, comments, formatting preservation, and text extraction. Use when working with professional documents (.docx files) for creating new documents, modifying or editing content, working with tracked changes, adding comments, or any other document tasks. Do NOT use for creating proposals, letters, or client-facing business documents from scratch - use document-builder for those.
---

# DOCX creation, editing, and analysis

## Overview

A user may ask you to create, edit, or analyse the contents of a .docx file. A .docx file is essentially a ZIP archive containing XML files and other resources that you can read or edit. You have different tools and workflows available for different tasks.

## Workflow Decision Tree

### Reading/Analysing Content

Use "Text extraction" or "Raw XML access" sections below

### Creating New Document

Use "Creating a new Word document" workflow

### Editing Existing Document

- **Your own document + simple changes**
  Use "Basic OOXML editing" workflow

- **Someone else's document**
  Use **"Redlining workflow"** (recommended default)

- **Legal, academic, business, or government docs**
  Use **"Redlining workflow"** (required)

## Reading and analysing content

### Text extraction

If you just need to read the text contents of a document, you should convert the document to markdown using pandoc. Pandoc provides excellent support for preserving document structure and can show tracked changes:

```bash
# Convert document to markdown with tracked changes
pandoc --track-changes=all path-to-file.docx -o output.md
# Options: --track-changes=accept/reject/all
```

### Raw XML access

You need raw XML access for: comments, complex formatting, document structure, embedded media, and metadata. For any of these features, you'll need to unpack a document and read its raw XML contents.

#### Unpacking a file

`python ooxml/scripts/unpack.py <office_file> <output_directory>`

#### Key file structures

* `word/document.xml` - Main document contents
* `word/comments.xml` - Comments referenced in document.xml
* `word/media/` - Embedded images and media files
* Tracked changes use `<w:ins>` (insertions) and `<w:del>` (deletions) tags

## Creating a new Word document

When creating a new Word document from scratch, use **docx-js**, which allows you to create Word documents using JavaScript/TypeScript.

### Workflow

1. **MANDATORY - READ ENTIRE FILE**: Read [`docx-js.md`](docx-js.md) (~500 lines) completely from start to finish. **NEVER set any range limits when reading this file.** Read the full file content for detailed syntax, critical formatting rules, and best practices before proceeding with document creation.
2. Create a JavaScript/TypeScript file using Document, Paragraph, TextRun components (You can assume all dependencies are installed, but if not, refer to the dependencies section below)
3. Export as .docx using Packer.toBuffer()

## Editing an existing Word document

When editing an existing Word document, use the **Document library** (a Python library for OOXML manipulation). The library automatically handles infrastructure setup and provides methods for document manipulation. For complex scenarios, you can access the underlying DOM directly through the library.

### Workflow

1. **MANDATORY - READ ENTIRE FILE**: Read [`ooxml.md`](ooxml.md) (~600 lines) completely from start to finish. **NEVER set any range limits when reading this file.** Read the full file content for the Document library API and XML patterns for directly editing document files.
2. Unpack the document: `python ooxml/scripts/unpack.py <office_file> <output_directory>`
3. Create and run a Python script using the Document library (see "Document Library" section in ooxml.md)
4. Pack the final document: `python ooxml/scripts/pack.py <input_directory> <office_file>`

The Document library provides both high-level methods for common operations and direct DOM access for complex scenarios.

## Redlining workflow for document review

Use this workflow when editing someone else's document or any formal/professional document. It implements tracked changes (redlining) so the document owner can review and accept/reject each change.

**Key principles**: Group changes into batches of 3-10. Only mark text that actually changes - never replace entire sentences when only a word changes. Preserve original run RSIDs for unchanged text.

**MANDATORY**: Before starting, read the full workflow in [`references/redlining-workflow.md`](references/redlining-workflow.md) for the complete step-by-step process, batching strategies, minimal edit principles with examples, and verification steps.

**Quick summary of steps**: Convert to markdown, identify and group changes, read ooxml.md, unpack document, implement changes in batches using the Document library, pack the result, and verify all changes.

## Converting Documents to Images

To visually analyse Word documents, convert them to images using a two-step process:

1. **Convert DOCX to PDF**:
   ```bash
   soffice --headless --convert-to pdf document.docx
   ```

2. **Convert PDF pages to JPEG images**:
   ```bash
   pdftoppm -jpeg -r 150 document.pdf page
   ```
   This creates files like `page-1.jpg`, `page-2.jpg`, etc.

Options:
- `-r 150`: Sets resolution to 150 DPI (adjust for quality/size balance)
- `-jpeg`: Output JPEG format (use `-png` for PNG if preferred)
- `-f N`: First page to convert (e.g., `-f 2` starts from page 2)
- `-l N`: Last page to convert (e.g., `-l 5` stops at page 5)
- `page`: Prefix for output files

Example for specific range:
```bash
pdftoppm -jpeg -r 150 -f 2 -l 5 document.pdf page  # Converts only pages 2-5
```

## Code Style Guidelines

**IMPORTANT**: When generating code for DOCX operations:
- Write concise code
- Avoid verbose variable names and redundant operations
- Avoid unnecessary print statements

## Dependencies

Required dependencies (install if not available):

- **pandoc**: `sudo apt-get install pandoc` (for text extraction)
- **docx**: `npm install -g docx` (for creating new documents)
- **LibreOffice**: `sudo apt-get install libreoffice` (for PDF conversion)
- **Poppler**: `sudo apt-get install poppler-utils` (for pdftoppm to convert PDF to images)
- **defusedxml**: `pip install defusedxml` (for secure XML parsing)