PyDocX

PyDocX is an extensible Python library for reading Microsoft Word DOCX (Office Open XML) documents and exporting their content to markup.

It includes an HTML exporter and a command-line interface. Developers can customize the HTML output or implement exporters for other markup formats using the underlying document model and export framework.

Features

• Built-in DOCX-to-HTML conversion.
• Support for headings, paragraphs, text formatting, hyperlinks, and images.
• Support for nested lists and tables, including merged cells.
• Customizable export behavior through exporter subclasses.
• Input from file paths, binary file objects, or file-like objects.

HTML is the built-in output format. Other formats require a custom exporter. PyDocX does not aim to reproduce Word's page layout exactly.

Installation

pip install pydocx

Quick start

Convert a document from the command line:

pydocx --html input.docx output.html

Or use the Python API:

from pydocx import PyDocX

html = PyDocX.to_html("input.docx")

You can also pass an open binary file:

from pydocx import PyDocX

with open("input.docx", "rb") as document:
    html = PyDocX.to_html(document)

Custom exporters

Use PyDocXHTMLExporter directly when you need control over HTML conversion:

from pydocx.export import PyDocXHTMLExporter

exporter = PyDocXHTMLExporter("input.docx")
html = exporter.export()

Subclass PyDocXHTMLExporter to customize HTML output, or pydocx.export.base.PyDocXExporter to implement another markup format.

See the extension guide for details.

Documentation and support

• Documentation
• Usage guide
• Release notes
• Source code
• Report an issue

Contributing

Bug reports, documentation improvements, and code contributions are welcome. When reporting a conversion problem, include your Python and PyDocX versions, the expected output, and a minimal DOCX example with sensitive information removed.

License

PyDocX is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See the LICENSE file for details.