Document DOCX Skill - Quick Reference

This skill enables creation, editing, and analysis of .docx files for reports, contracts, proposals, documentation, and template-driven outputs.

Modern best practices (2026):

• Prefer templates + styles over manual formatting.
• Treat .docx as the editable source; treat PDF as a release artifact.
• If distributing externally, include basic accessibility hygiene (headings, table headers, alt text).

Quick Reference

Tool Selection

• Prefer docxtpl when non-developers must edit layout/design in Word.
• Prefer python-docx for structural edits (paragraphs/tables/headers/footers) when formatting complexity is moderate.
• Prefer docx (Node.js) for server-side generation in TypeScript-heavy stacks.
• Prefer mammoth for text-first extraction or DOCX-to-HTML (best effort; may drop some layout fidelity).

Known Limits (Plan Around These)

• .doc (legacy) is not supported by these libraries; convert to .docx first (e.g., LibreOffice).
• python-docx cannot reliably create true tracked changes; use Word compare or specialized OOXML tooling.
• Tables of Contents and many fields are placeholders until opened/updated in Word.

Core Operations

Create Document (Python - python-docx)

from docx import Document
from docx.shared import Inches, Pt
from docx.enum.text import WD_ALIGN_PARAGRAPH

doc = Document()

# Title
title = doc.add_heading('Document Title', 0)
title.alignment = WD_ALIGN_PARAGRAPH.CENTER

# Paragraph with formatting
para = doc.add_paragraph()
run = para.add_run('Bold and ')
run.bold = True
run = para.add_run('italic text.')
run.italic = True

# Table
table = doc.add_table(rows=3, cols=3)
table.style = 'Table Grid'
for i, row in enumerate(table.rows):
    for j, cell in enumerate(row.cells):
        cell.text = f'Row {i+1}, Col {j+1}'

# Image
doc.add_picture('image.png', width=Inches(4))

# Save
doc.save('output.docx')

Create Document (Node.js - docx)

import { Document, Packer, Paragraph, TextRun, Table, TableRow, TableCell } from 'docx';
import * as fs from 'fs';

const doc = new Document({
  sections: [{
    properties: {},
    children: [
      new Paragraph({
        children: [
          new TextRun({ text: 'Bold text', bold: true }),
          new TextRun({ text: ' and normal text.' }),
        ],
      }),
      new Table({
        rows: [
          new TableRow({
            children: [
              new TableCell({ children: [new Paragraph('Cell 1')] }),
              new TableCell({ children: [new Paragraph('Cell 2')] }),
            ],
          }),
        ],
      }),
    ],
  }],
});

Packer.toBuffer(doc).then((buffer) => {
  fs.writeFileSync('output.docx', buffer);
});

Template-Based Generation (Python - docxtpl)

from docxtpl import DocxTemplate

doc = DocxTemplate('template.docx')
context = {
    'company_name': 'Acme Corp',
    'date': '2025-01-15',
    'items': [
        {'name': 'Widget A', 'price': 100},
        {'name': 'Widget B', 'price': 200},
    ]
}
doc.render(context)
doc.save('filled_template.docx')

Extract Content (Python - python-docx)

from docx import Document

doc = Document('input.docx')

# Extract all text
full_text = []
for para in doc.paragraphs:
    full_text.append(para.text)

# Extract tables
for table in doc.tables:
    for row in table.rows:
        row_data = [cell.text for cell in row.cells]
        print(row_data)

Styling Reference

Do / Avoid (Dec 2025)

Do

• Use consistent heading levels and a table of contents for long docs.
• Capture decisions and action items with owners and due dates.
• Store docs in a versioned, searchable system.

Avoid

• Manual formatting instead of styles (breaks consistency).
• Docs with no owner or review cadence (stale quickly).
• Copy/pasting without updating definitions and links.

Output Quality Checklist

• Structure: consistent heading hierarchy, styles, and (when needed) an auto-generated table of contents.
• Decisions: decisions/actions captured with owner + due date (not buried in prose).
• Versioning: doc ID + version + change summary; review cadence defined.
• Accessibility hygiene: headings/reading order are correct; table headers are marked; alt text for non-decorative images.
• Reuse: use assets/doc-template-pack.md for decision logs and recurring doc types.

Optional: AI / Automation

Use only when explicitly requested and policy-compliant.

• Summarize meeting notes into decisions/actions; humans verify accuracy.
• Draft first-pass docs from outlines; do not invent facts or quotes.

Navigation

Resources

• [references/docx-patterns.md](references/docx-patterns.md) - Advanced formatting, styles, headers/footers
• [references/template-workflows.md](references/template-workflows.md) - Mail merge, batch generation
• [references/tracked-changes.md](references/tracked-changes.md) - Tracked changes: what is feasible, and what is not
• [references/accessibility-compliance.md](references/accessibility-compliance.md) - WCAG 2.2 AA, reading order, alt text, EU EAA
• [references/cross-platform-compatibility.md](references/cross-platform-compatibility.md) - Rendering across Word, Google Docs, LibreOffice
• [references/document-automation-pipelines.md](references/document-automation-pipelines.md) - CI/CD batch generation, quality gates
• [data/sources.json](data/sources.json) - Library documentation links

Scripts

• scripts/docxinspectooxml.py - Dependency-free OOXML inspection (including tracked changes signals)
• scripts/docx_extract.py - Extract text/tables to JSON (requires python-docx)
• scripts/docxrendertemplate.py - Render a docxtpl template (requires docxtpl)
• scripts/docxtohtml.mjs - Convert .docx to HTML (requires mammoth)

Templates

• [assets/report-template.md](assets/report-template.md) - Standard report structure
• [assets/contract-template.md](assets/contract-template.md) - Legal document structure
• [assets/doc-template-pack.md](assets/doc-template-pack.md) - Decision log, meeting notes, changelog templates

Related Skills

• [../document-pdf/SKILL.md](../document-pdf/SKILL.md) - PDF generation and conversion
• [../docs-codebase/SKILL.md](../docs-codebase/SKILL.md) - Technical writing patterns