Comprehensive document creation, editing, and analysis with support for tracked changes, comments, formatting preservation, and text extraction. When Claude needs to work with professional documents (.docx files) for: (1) Creating new documents, (2) Modifying or editing content, (3) Working with tracked changes, (4) Adding comments, or any other document tasks
name docx description Comprehensive document creation, editing, and analysis with support for tracked changes, comments, formatting preservation, and text extraction. When Claude needs to work with professional documents (.docx files) for: (1) Creating new documents, (2) Modifying or editing content, (3) Working with tracked changes, (4) Adding comments, or any other document tasks license Proprietary. LICENSE.txt has complete terms DOCX creation, editing, and analysis Overview A user may ask you to create, edit, or analyze 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/Analyzing 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 analyzing 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:
pandoc --track-changes=all path-to-file.docx -o output.md
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
doc = Document()
doc.add_heading( 'Your Title Here' , level= 0 )
doc.add_paragraph( 'Your content here.' )
doc.save( '/workspace/output.docx' ) Quick Commands
pip install python-docx
python create_document.py IMPORTANT : Use bash action to run Python scripts. Do NOT use the edit action to create .docx files directly. 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 MANDATORY - READ ENTIRE FILE : Read 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. Unpack the document: python ooxml/scripts/unpack.py <office_file> <output_directory> Create and run a Python script using the Document library (see "Document Library" section in ooxml.md) 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 This workflow allows you to plan comprehensive tracked changes using markdown before implementing them in OOXML. CRITICAL : For complete tracked changes, you must implement ALL changes systematically. Batching Strategy : Group related changes into batches of 3-10 changes. This makes debugging manageable while maintaining efficiency. Test each batch before moving to the next. Principle: Minimal, Precise Edits When implementing tracked changes, only mark text that actually changes. Repeating unchanged text makes edits harder to review and appears unprofessional. Break replacements into: [unchanged text] + [deletion] + [insertion] + [unchanged text]. Preserve the original run's RSID for unchanged text by extracting the <w:r> element from the original and reusing it. Example - Changing "30 days" to "60 days" in a sentence:
'<w:del><w:r><w:delText>The term is 30 days.</w:delText></w:r></w:del><w:ins><w:r><w:t>The term is 60 days.</w:t></w:r></w:ins>'
'<w:r w:rsidR="00AB12CD"><w:t>The term is </w:t></w:r><w:del><w:r><w:delText>30</w:delText></w:r></w:del><w:ins><w:r><w:t>60</w:t></w:r></w:ins><w:r w:rsidR="00AB12CD"><w:t> days.</w:t></w:r>' Tracked changes workflow Get markdown representation : Convert document to markdown with tracked changes preserved: pandoc --track-changes=all path-to-file.docx -o current.md Identify and group changes : Review the document and identify ALL changes needed, organizing them into logical batches: Location methods (for finding changes in XML): Section/heading numbers (e.g., "Section 3.2", "Article IV") Paragraph identifiers if numbered Grep patterns with unique surrounding text Document structure (e.g., "first paragraph", "signature block") DO NOT use markdown line numbers
grep "replacement phrase" verification.md
Check that no unintended changes were introduced Converting Documents to Images To visually analyze Word documents, convert them to images using a two-step process: Convert DOCX to PDF : soffice --headless --convert-to pdf document.docx Convert PDF pages to JPEG images : 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: pdftoppm -jpeg -r 150 -f 2 -l 5 document.pdf page
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) python-docx : pip install python-docx (for creating/editing 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)