Reading .doc file in Python using antiword in Windows (also .docx)

Question

I tried reading a .doc file like -

with open('file.doc', errors='ignore') as f:
    text = f.read()

It did read that file but with huge junk, I can't remove that junk as I don't know from where it starts and where it ends.

I also tried installing textract module which says it can read from any file format but there were many dependency issues while downloading it in Windows.

So I alternately did this with antiword command line utility, my answer is below.

Answer 1

You can use antiword command line utility to do this, I know most of you would have tried it but still I wanted to share.

• Download antiword from here

• Extract the antiword folder to C:\ and add the path C:\antiword to your PATH environment variable.

Here is a sample of how to use it, handling docx and doc files:

import os, docx2txt
def get_doc_text(filepath, file):
    if file.endswith('.docx'):
       text = docx2txt.process(file)
       return text
    elif file.endswith('.doc'):
       # converting .doc to .docx
       doc_file = filepath + file
       docx_file = filepath + file + 'x'
       if not os.path.exists(docx_file):
          os.system('antiword ' + doc_file + ' > ' + docx_file)
          with open(docx_file) as f:
             text = f.read()
          os.remove(docx_file) #docx_file was just to read, so deleting
       else:
          # already a file with same name as doc exists having docx extension, 
          # which means it is a different file, so we cant read it
          print('Info : file with same name of doc exists having docx extension, so we cant read it')
          text = ''
       return text

Now call this function:

filepath = "D:\\input\\"
files = os.listdir(filepath)
for file in files:
    text = get_doc_text(filepath, file)
    print(text)

This could be good alternate way to read .doc file in Python on Windows.

Hope it helps, Thanks.