docx-shell-extract

# DOCX Shell Extraction ## When to Use This Skill Use this pattern when you need to read or extract text from Microsoft Word (.docx) files in constrained environments where: - The `python-docx` library is not available - You cannot install additional Python packages - You need a quick, reliable shell-based solution ## Core Technique DOCX files are ZIP archives containing XML files. The main document content is stored in `word/document.xml`. You can extract and parse this using standard shell tools. ## Step-by-Step Instructions ### Step 1: Extract the document.xml content ```bash unzip -p filename.docx word/document.xml ``` The `-p` flag pipes the content to stdout without extracting to disk. ### Step 2: Strip XML tags to get plain text ```bash unzip -p filename.docx word/document.xml | sed 's/<[^>]*>//g' ``` This removes all XML tags, leaving the text content. ### Step 3: Clean up whitespace (optional) For cleaner output, add additional sed processing: ```bash unzip -p filename.docx word/document.xml | \ sed 's/<[^>]*>//g' | \ sed 's/&[^;]*;//g' | \ sed 's/^[[:space:]]*//' | \ sed 's/[[:space:]]*$//' | \ sed '/^$/d' ``` This removes: - XML tags - XML entities (like `&amp;`, `&lt;`) - Leading/trailing whitespace - Empty lines ### Step 4: Save to a text file (optional) ```bash unzip -p filename.docx word/document.xml | \ sed 's/<[^>]*>//g' > output.txt ``` ## Complete Example ```bash # Extract text from a Word document DOCX_FILE="report.docx" OUTPUT_FILE="report_text.txt" unzip -p "$DOCX_FILE" word/document.xml | \ sed 's/<[^>]*>//g' | \ sed 's/&[^;]*;//g' | \ sed '/^$/d' > "$OUTPUT_FILE" echo "Extracted text saved to $OUTPUT_FILE" ``` ## Verification After extraction, verify the content was captured: ```bash # Check if output file has content if [ -s "$OUTPUT_FILE" ]; then echo "Successfully extracted $(wc -l < "$OUTPUT_FILE") lines" head -5 "$OUTPUT_FILE" else echo "Warning: Output file is empty" fi ``` ## Limitations - This method extracts raw text without formatting - Complex layouts, tables, and images are not preserved - Some special characters may need additional handling - Works best for text-heavy documents ## Alternatives to Explore If this approach fails or the DOCX structure differs: - Check for `word/document.xml` existence: `unzip -l filename.docx | grep document.xml` - Some documents may use `word/*.xml` with different naming - Consider `pandoc` if available: `pandoc filename.docx -t plain`