docx

DOCX creation, editing, and analysis

Overview

A .docx file is a ZIP archive containing XML files.

Quick Reference

Task	Approach
Read/analyze content	pandoc or unpack for raw XML
Create new document	Use docx-js - see Creating New Documents below
Edit existing document	Unpack → edit XML → repack - see Editing Existing Documents below

Converting .doc to .docx

Legacy .doc files must be converted before editing:

python scripts/office/soffice.py --headless --convert-to docx document.doc

Reading Content

# Text extraction with tracked changes
pandoc --track-changes=all document.docx -o output.md

# Raw XML access
python scripts/office/unpack.py document.docx unpacked/

Converting to Images

python scripts/office/soffice.py --headless --convert-to pdf document.docx
pdftoppm -jpeg -r 150 document.pdf page

Accepting Tracked Changes

To produce a clean document with all tracked changes accepted (requires LibreOffice):

python scripts/accept_changes.py input.docx output.docx

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Creating New Documents

Generate .docx files with JavaScript, then validate. Install: npm install -g docx

Runtime note (MOZI): save the generator script with a .cjs extension (e.g. build_doc.cjs, run with node build_doc.cjs). These snippets use CommonJS require(), which throws ReferenceError: require is not defined in ES module scope when a nearby package.json declares "type": "module"; a .cjs extension forces CommonJS everywhere. Write to an absolute path under the output directory and confirm the file exists on disk before reporting it — never claim a document was produced without verifying it.

Setup

const { Document, Packer, Paragraph, TextRun, Table, TableRow, TableCell, ImageRun,
        Header, Footer, AlignmentType, PageOrientation, LevelFormat, ExternalHyperlink,
        InternalHyperlink, Bookmark, FootnoteReferenceRun, PositionalTab,
        PositionalTabAlignment, PositionalTabRelativeTo, PositionalTabLeader,
        TabStopType, TabStopPosition, Column, SectionType,
        TableOfContents, HeadingLevel, BorderStyle, WidthType, ShadingType,
        VerticalAlign, PageNumber, PageBreak } = require('docx');

const doc = new Document({ sections: [{ children: [/* content */] }] });
Packer.toBuffer(doc).then(buffer => fs.writeFileSync("doc.docx", buffer));