Working with Documents

Quick Reference

Format Read Create Edit

DOCX pandoc, python-docx docx-js OOXML (unpack/edit/pack)

PDF pdfplumber, pypdf reportlab pypdf (merge/split)

PPTX markitdown html2pptx OOXML (unpack/edit/pack)

Word Documents (.docx)

Reading Content

Convert to markdown (preserves structure)

pandoc document.docx -o output.md

With tracked changes visible

pandoc --track-changes=all document.docx -o output.md

Creating New Documents

Use docx-js (JavaScript):

const { Document, Packer, Paragraph, TextRun } = require('docx');

const doc = new Document({ sections: [{ children: [ new Paragraph({ children: [ new TextRun({ text: "Hello World", bold: true }), ], }), ], }], });

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

Editing Existing Documents (Tracked Changes)

1. Unpack

python ooxml/scripts/unpack.py document.docx unpacked/

2. Edit XML files in unpacked/word/document.xml

Key files:

- word/document.xml (main content)

- word/comments.xml (comments)

- word/media/ (images)

3. Pack

python ooxml/scripts/pack.py unpacked/ edited.docx

Tracked changes XML pattern:

<!-- Deletion --> <w:del><w:r><w:delText>old text</w:delText></w:r></w:del>

<!-- Insertion --> <w:ins><w:r><w:t>new text</w:t></w:r></w:ins>

PDF Documents

Reading PDFs

import pdfplumber

Extract text

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf: for page in pdf.pages: print(page.extract_text())

Extract tables

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf: for page in pdf.pages: tables = page.extract_tables() for table in tables: for row in table: print(row)

Creating PDFs

from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Paragraph from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet

doc = SimpleDocTemplate("output.pdf", pagesize=letter) styles = getSampleStyleSheet() story = [ Paragraph("Report Title", styles['Title']), Paragraph("Body text goes here.", styles['Normal']), ] doc.build(story)

Merging/Splitting PDFs

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

Merge

writer = PdfWriter() for pdf_file in ["doc1.pdf", "doc2.pdf"]: reader = PdfReader(pdf_file) for page in reader.pages: writer.add_page(page) writer.write(open("merged.pdf", "wb"))

Split

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf") for i, page in enumerate(reader.pages): writer = PdfWriter() writer.add_page(page) writer.write(open(f"page_{i+1}.pdf", "wb"))

Command-Line Tools

Extract text

pdftotext input.pdf output.txt pdftotext -layout input.pdf output.txt # Preserve layout

Merge with qpdf

qpdf --empty --pages file1.pdf file2.pdf -- merged.pdf

Split pages

qpdf input.pdf --pages . 1-5 -- pages1-5.pdf

PowerPoint Presentations (.pptx)

Reading Content

Convert to markdown

python -m markitdown presentation.pptx

Creating New Presentations

Use html2pptx workflow:

• Create HTML slides (720pt × 405pt for 16:9)

• Convert with html2pptx.js library

• Validate with thumbnail grid

Create thumbnails for validation

python scripts/thumbnail.py output.pptx --cols 4

Editing Existing Presentations

1. Unpack

python ooxml/scripts/unpack.py presentation.pptx unpacked/

Key files:

- ppt/slides/slide1.xml, slide2.xml, etc.

- ppt/notesSlides/ (speaker notes)

- ppt/media/ (images)

2. Edit XML

3. Validate

python ooxml/scripts/validate.py unpacked/ --original presentation.pptx

4. Pack

python ooxml/scripts/pack.py unpacked/ edited.pptx

Rearranging Slides

Duplicate, reorder, delete slides

python scripts/rearrange.py template.pptx output.pptx 0,3,3,5,7

Creates: slide 0, slide 3 (twice), slide 5, slide 7

Converting Between Formats

DOCX/PPTX to PDF

soffice --headless --convert-to pdf document.docx

PDF to images

pdftoppm -jpeg -r 150 document.pdf page

Creates: page-1.jpg, page-2.jpg, etc.

DOCX to Markdown

pandoc document.docx -o output.md

OCR for Scanned Documents

import pytesseract from pdf2image import convert_from_path

images = convert_from_path('scanned.pdf') text = "" for image in images: text += pytesseract.image_to_string(image)

Design Guidelines (Presentations)

Color Palettes

Pick 3-5 colors that work together:

Palette Colors

Classic Blue Navy #1C2833, Slate #2E4053, Silver #AAB7B8

Teal & Coral Teal #5EA8A7, Coral #FE4447, White #FFFFFF

Black & Gold Gold #BF9A4A, Black #000000, Cream #F4F6F6

Web-Safe Fonts Only

Arial, Helvetica, Times New Roman, Georgia, Verdana, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, Courier New, Impact

Layout Rules

• Two-column: Use for exactly 2 distinct items

• Three-column: Use for exactly 3 items

• Never vertically stack charts below text

• Full-bleed images with text overlays work well

Dependencies

Python

pip install pypdf pdfplumber reportlab python-docx openpyxl

System tools

apt-get install pandoc poppler-utils libreoffice

Node.js (for docx-js)

npm install docx

Verification

Run: python scripts/verify.py

Related Skills

• working-with-spreadsheets

• Excel file handling

• building-nextjs-apps

• Frontend for document uploads