Using python-docx to Create and Manipulate Word Documents in Python

Python-Docx is a Python library for creating and updating Microsoft Word (.docx) files, making document automation straightforward.

Installation can be performed with pip: pip install python-docx or, if both Python 2 and 3 are present, with pip3 install python-docx .

The article walks through a complete usage demonstration, starting with importing the library, creating a new document, adding a title heading, paragraphs, bold and italic text, additional headings, bullet and numbered lists, inserting an image, constructing a table with data, adding a page break, and finally saving the document as demo.docx .

# 1. Import python-docx library
from docx import Document
from docx.shared import Inches

document = Document()
document.add_heading('Document Title', 0)

# 2. Add a plain paragraph
p = document.add_paragraph('A plain paragraph having some ')

# 3. Set font formatting
p.add_run('bold').bold = True
p.add_run(' and some ')
p.add_run('italic.').italic = True

document.add_heading('Heading, level 1', level=1)
document.add_paragraph('Intense quote', style='Intense Quote')

document.add_paragraph('first item in unordered list', style='List Bullet')
document.add_paragraph('first item in ordered list', style='List Number')

# 4. Insert an image
document.add_picture('monty-truth.png', width=Inches(1.25))

# 5. Add a table
records = (
    (3, '101', 'Spam'),
    (7, '422', 'Eggs'),
    (4, '631', 'Spam, spam, eggs, and spam')
)

table = document.add_table(rows=1, cols=3)
hdr_cells = table.rows[0].cells
hdr_cells[0].text = 'Qty'
hdr_cells[1].text = 'Id'
hdr_cells[2].text = 'Desc'
for qty, id, desc in records:
    row_cells = table.add_row().cells
    row_cells[0].text = str(qty)
    row_cells[1].text = id
    row_cells[2].text = desc

document.add_page_break()

# 6. Save the document
document.save('demo.docx')

Additional resources include the official python-docx documentation, which details all features and the full API reference, as well as the project's GitHub page for more examples.